Will self-heating cycling bib tights make overshoes obsolete? Castelli’s Steve Smith on the future of cycle clothing

In the second of our two exclusive interviews with Castelli boss Steve Smith, we ask him about the future of cycle clothing and find out about new eco-fabrics, integrated heating and lighting, and how piezo technology could potentially create a new era in self-generated warmth for your cycling garments. 

For those of you who haven't read part one on aero clothing and kitting out the pro peloton, the story goes that we were originally commissioned to write a sponsored piece on behalf of Castelli (that's here, and worth a read if you want to know about the brand's new Ristretto tech), but the interview took many interesting twists and turns along the way... enough for two bonus articles, anyway! 

road.cc: Recently Gore took its PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) fabrics off sale. We know that, for environmental reasons, fabric manufacturers are moving away from using PFAS. What effect has this had on Castelli?  

Steve Smith: That’s right – that’s all due to the impending environmental regulations. Although, in this case, Gore is actually shutting it off before they are required to. You can still sell PFAS garments but the laws are definitely on their way and Gore is stopping before they come down the pike. 

> How green is your waterproof cycling jacket?

But, actually, the impetus coming from the environmental side is one element that pushed us at Castelli to create our newest fabric technology, Ristretto. This is designed to provide high air permeability to enhance rider comfort and dryness. We tried to create similar air-permeable products in the past, but we never had the same compulsion. However, with these issues of access to fabrics becoming more difficult, we felt we had to do something. 

It must cost a great deal to develop proprietary fabric technology, such as Ristretto. With Gore PFAS not being available, how important is it for clothing companies to produce their own fabric technology?

Most of them can’t really do it because you really need to have some volume behind you to make it worthwhile. A lot of the smaller, newer brands are struggling just to meet the 1,000m minimum order amount, so I think it will be hard for them. 

The big players, like Polartec, they’ll be doing their own research. I spoke to their engineer a few weeks ago and he’s a very committed tech guy and he’s super interested in what we’ve done with Ristretto, but he hasn’t been able to touch a Polartec version just because they’ve been working on their all their PFAS- free membrane fabrics. 

If PFAS fabrics are unavailable, what is the future for winter clothing?

If we’d spoken eight months ago, I would have said there’s nothing else out there to replace Gore, but there have been some significant developments recently in terms of being able to produce a better performing product. The downside is that it bumps garments up to another price level – it’s about 20% more expensive than we had with Gore. 

But for people who do ride in mixed conditions, and who want weather protection, we’ll be in a better place than we were before. And I think we will continue to see the onward march of technology – we’re going to get better in those winter products.

What do you see coming for warmer weather gear?

In summertime, I still think we have plenty to do. How you dress for summer will be even more influenced by the aesthetic element of things. The aim will be to bring the aesthetic and the technological sides together – we can make you look good as well as perform well. 

This past summer we brought out a new Espresso line where, instead of trying to make the fastest aero product, we tried to make the product as perfect as possible for every day riding. We have fast aero clothing for when you do pin a number on, but for other days, we’ve been looking at what potential there is for comfort and a general positive feel and look – with great colours and clean lines – when aero isn’t an issue. 

I think this movement has coincided with people fully accepting or endorsing the endurance bike. Pro racing has got so extreme, it has become less and less of an inspiration for what the rest of us do. That’s as applicable to clothing as it is with bike choice. 

So if you want to go as fast as you can, we’ve have products for that. But for the rest of the time, on the bike side, we’ve accepted that we can use wider tyres and ride just a little more slowly. We think that is going to have a big impact of summer clothing, too.

What do you think about integrated design elements in clothing – such as lighting or heating?

I’m highly, highly disappointed by the electric solutions we’ve seen. Seven or eight years ago, all the talk was about wearables but the stuff that people have come up with in terms of integrated clothing has been horrendous. 

So I’m negative about the current state of wearables but there are potential things that are going to be super cool and I think we’ll end up adopting them so quickly we’ll actually forget that it wasn’t always this way. 

What sort of things in this area excite you?

We’ve looked at integrated heating a couple of times and it’s either been prohibitively expensive – to the point where I don’t think consumers would really be prepared to step up to that – or it has a short duration. 

I think the ideal piece would be something that is less protective to the elements that we have today, but you’d turn it on for the first 10 minutes when you leave the house and once you’re up to operating temperature you would turn it off. Then, if you stopped for a coffee, you could turn it on again. I think that would be absolutely phenomenal. 

But the heating elements are difficult to work with and I think you would still want that jacket to be able to go home, pull out the battery and throw it in the wash. So all the electronics need to be washable. 

How close are we to achieving that?

My dream project for a jacket – and we’ve tried to go down this road but we’re not quite there yet – is to innovate with flexible solar panels that could charge a battery, connected to a back flasher that is motion-detection operated, with the whole system sealed. 

Basically, anytime you’ve got the jacket on and you’re riding outside in the daylight, it’s continually charging. And then it is always on and flashing when you are moving. And then you can just take it off and throw it in the wash. 

The problem is that the flexible solar panels don’t create enough energy yet for the LED flashers that we have. So we need more efficient flashers and more efficient solar panels, but we’re not that far away. There is stuff coming.

What other tech do you see on the horizon?

I think the cool one coming along is with piezo electric technology. This technology essentially generates an electric current when metallic elements move. There has been some initial testing around this and, in theory, you could make a cycling tight where the pedalling motion of your hip and your knee would generate enough current to actually heat your feet. 

If we can maximise the energy generation and the efficiency of a heating element, you could have a long tight with a built-in foot part. You’d have a switch where you could turn it off when it gets too hot. So someday cold feet might be a thing of the past, without the need for batteries or anything like that. 

And if we really push the efficiency of that, imagine if we were able to capture enough energy from your breathing, the expansion and contraction of your chest, to heat a glove. 

So there is a lot of really cool stuff that we know how to do, we just don’t have efficient enough fabrics to create that kind of piezo electric current, because electric heating elements draw quite a bit of current right now. But I have no doubt that some day we’ll get there.