The Vulpine Portixol is a stylish, lightweight rain jacket with thoughtful cycling-specific features.
Sometimes, you don’t need the bib shorts and jersey, but you still want to wear clothes designed for time in the saddle. You may not need the chamois for your commute, but because you are a cyclist, you still want to look good. Enter Vulpine. A British cycling apparel company with classic tailoring guiding their designs, Vulpine offers thoughtful, cycling-oriented clothing for people who don’t always want to look like cyclists.
The Vulpine Portixol is a full-on rain jacket, not just an outer shell. It may not pack down into itself, but it is still lightweight, waterproof, and breathable enough to be my favorite jacket in the saddle. It’s also stylish enough to be my favorite jacket at the cafe.
It incorporates many thoughtful touches that make it clear that it was designed with cyclists in mind. Those begin with how it wears. It’s more trim in the torso than a hiking jacket. The sleeves have extra length for reaching the drops. The cut is longer in the back, without looking baggy or uneven. The two-way zip front, which lets you vent some hill-climbing heat from the bottom without losing the rain protection, sports stubby PU leather tug pulls on the zippers, just long enough to grab with numb, gloved fingers. The fleece-like lining in the collar and pockets feels soft on a clean shaved neck and warm at stop lights for cold hands.
We take our rain jackets seriously in Oregon, where it is either currently raining, just about to rain, just finished raining, or summer. Showers Pass is a local company, and an observant urban cyclist will see many of their jackets protecting commuters on rainy days. In many ways, the Showers Pass Elite 2.1 set the standard for me in what to expect from a cycling-specific rain jacket. For my urban riding routine, which includes commuting, grocery shopping, and errands, I prefer more understated sartorial choices. Rather than light up like a Christmas tree in vibrant reds or yellows, I want my cycling-specific clothes to look, well, like regular clothes as well. So, while I could have picked up an Elite 2.1 in black, I opted for the Portixol in charcoal grey, because its trim, clean design doesn’t scream active lifestyle.
The jacket’s real comfort in a rain shower comes from the ripstop, cross-hatched outer shell with a DWR finish and the breathable layer bonded inside. This waterproof/breathable lining feels a bit slippery on the skin and does not pull or catch. It’s comfortable over a long sleeve jersey on colder days and even on bare arms in the shoulder season. The jacket’s temperature regulation is enhanced by mesh, vented pits and a horizontal vent across the back, between the shoulder blades. The breathable nylon makes it versatile. I have worn it over thermal base layers on rides in sub-freezing temperatures and over a short sleeve jersey on warmer days. For example, I recently rode a metric century into the Columbia River Gorge. I knew it would be a long day and hoped the rain would taper off after lunch. By the time of the climb to Crown Point, the day had warmed up to 55, and I shed the jacket for the last few miles. Even though it is not the sort of jacket designed to stuff into itself, I was able to roll it up and slip it in a jersey pocket while my arms soaked up some Vitamin D. Let’s be clear though; the Portixol is not for the gram counters. Not because it weighs all that much. At 300g, it won’t weigh you down. It’s just not the sort of jacket that appeals to time trialists. I stuffed it in the jersey pocket, but it’s not the sort of micro jacket that comes with its own stuff sack.
For the most part, though, I use the Portixol on my commute. On cool, fair weather days (there are a few of them in Oregon), I like to ride to campus already dressed for work. The Portixol looks just as good with trousers as it does with bib shorts. And more thoughtful detailing makes this my commuting jacket on inclement weather days. Inside the bottom cuff is a dropdown flap, which can be used as either a waterproof barrier against a wet seat (if, like me, you park your bike outside and forget to cover the saddle). It is held inside the jacket by magnets, sewn discreetly into both the tip of the flap and the jacket’s lower back. Riding home at night (or in the rain), I drop the flap down so that its printed reflective pattern faces the drivers rolling up behind me. And if I want an extra splash of color in the daylight, I can flip it up to the magnets revealing a lime green (Vulpine’s signature highlight color) panel. This is the same nearly neon lime green for the stitching at the nape of the neck which lets admirers know where they can find a jacket just like yours.
Since I wear it often during the winter, sometimes on longer rides, I have to wash it regularly. The first four or five times, I washed it with regular detergent and the DWR finish wore off. After that, I washed it twice with Nikwax Tech Wash, and its back to new; the water beads on contact and rolls down the back and sleeves as soon as it builds up.
My only complaint is that on mine, the right and left pockets are slightly asymmetrical. While the zippered openings to the pocket are mirror images, the pockets must be different heights. There is a silhouetted horizontal line in the ripstop exterior where the pocket ends, about a third of the way up the torso. The right pocket is about an inch taller than the left. This has the effect of a subtle staggered horizontal line beginning at the jacket’s main zipper and wrapping around to the sides, a minor blemish in an otherwise carefully understated style.
