About a week ago I received the newly designed SeV Performance T-Shirt by Scottevest Incorporated. The shirt is part of their “Technology Enabled Clothing (TEC)” line. This t-shirt is for the avid technologist who is constantly on the go.
Fitting into the shirt and installing your portable devices is a bit tricky. Once I put the shirt on, it did not make it clear where exactly the wires and devices fit. It took more than a few minutes to “figure out” how exactly the devices fit.
When I first tried out the shirt, I could tell that it was light weight, but with an iPod and digital camera it made the shirt feel incredibly off-centered. When using the shirt on a hot day, the fabric did not “soak up” the sun; the shirt did not get that hot. After the first use, this shirt is not designed for the average iPodder.
The shirt is designed out of 100% Polyester 3M Quick Dry fabric – the same materials that athletic clothing is made out of. This type of Polyester is designed to repel moisture from your body, which in turn means the shirt dries faster and the user is not left with a “soaked” shirt after a good workout.
The shirt comes equipped with a patented Weight Management System; in essence, the shirt has extra fabric in the shoulders in which it evenly distributes the weight.
The shirt comes equipped with the patented “Personal Area Network” in which wires are run in the lining of the jacket. All of the pockets have a little hole in the pocket, in which it allows you to connect all of your devices. For example, if you wanted to connect your phone to your Pocket PC you could do this without having any wires showing. The shirt also has a hidden compartment to store a pair of ipod sized earbuds.
After having used the shirt off and on for a little over a week, it has proven to be a great shirt for the outdoor businessman. Having tested the shirt with a Motorola RAZR, Video iPod, and Digital Camera, the shirt held up to all of its claims. The Personal Area Network was very difficult to set up, and was not that much of a help.
Pro’s
- Light weight
- Comfortable fit
- Cost efficient
- Attractive Design
Cons
- Difficult to install devices
- A bit heavy when installing more than an iPod and phone
- Lack of documentation or step by step set up guide.
I would recommend this product to those who are constantly on the go and care about having people see your “cords” or “earbuds.” For $34.99 (Plus Tax and S&H), it is a nice luxury, but certainly not a shirt you could wear everyday.
For more information and to purchase the product directly from the manufacturer, please visit Scottevest Online Store. The shirt comes in sizes Medium thru XX Large and is available in both short or long sleeve designs.
Courtesy // Scottevest
This is a diagram of the various components of the shirt.
Courtesy // Scottevest
This is an “inside out” view of the shirt.
Courtesy // Scottevest
This is the shirt as it will first appear once you open the packaging.
For a video demonstration of the Personal Area Network feature see Personal Area Network (PAN)*
… and for the Weight Management System feature see Weight Management System Demo*
* Windows Media Player Required
Trust me, you don’t want to purchase their jackets (at least not anymore).
They have removed the weight-management system (which is extra fabric on the shoulders and shoulder-area, intended to disperse/transfer all the weight of the items IN the jacket, to your shoulders, instead of on your back, neckline, back-of-neck, and pretty much anywhere else), but unfortunately still market the products as having the weight-management system (which is VERY misleading, and could also be construed as LYING to the customer, which is, after all, the one that keeps the company running. no customers, no company. the company MUST DO what the customer asks).
the other issue is, lots of other customers have also already talked to Scott Jordan (the ceo, owner, and founder of the company (along with his wife who is the co-founder)) about this, and he keeps on claiming that “it is not needed”. let’s get one thing straight: the guy has a CHIROPRACTOR, to keep his back straight and balanced. not everyone has that luxury. perhaps he does not FEEL the extra weight go on his back and the back of his neck, but other customers (myself included) DO.
he MUST *BRING BACK* the weight-management system, or change the information on the website to reflect that they no longer use the extra-fabric-on-the-shoulders (ie. the weight-management system) anymore.
i own a SeV jacket with 25 pockets and i never use it. at the very most, i only use 1 or 2 pockets; but i just carry OR my wallet OR my mp3 player, because if i carry more things, the jacket starts weighing HEAVILY on my neck (which is already made worse by the fact that the jacket has a metal-snap in the neckline area intended to hold in place the y-juntion part of your earbuds or earphones so your earbuds or earphones don’t slide side-to-side or left-to-right or right-to-left when you put them on or take them off. and that metal snap is already pressing on the middle of the back of your neck, where your spine is, which can be a HUGE discomfort. added that to the fact that the neckline of the garment is not designed like other garments, in which from the back of the head you go straight down. instead there is a sort of “curve” that makes your jacket actually hang down on your neck before then curving down your back and back straight down. and the neckline itself is really thick also, because the hood is intended to fold in into the neckline and be stored IN the neckline. which is ALSO *REALLY* uncomfortable for people with thick and/or wide necks)
i also own another SeV jacket with 18 pockets but i don’t use that one much either, because it also has the already-mentioned-in-the-previous-paragraph problems.
SeV’s original design-team consisted of clothing-designers AND engineers. however, now they just have 1 clothing-designer. i’m aware that someone previously e-mailed Scott Jordan asking if they still have their original design-team of clothing designers AND engineers, but so far, no reply from Scott Jordan (however, by watching various videos of Scottevest, it now seems pretty clear they don’t have their original design-team. now they just have a design-team of ONE designer, one Kristin Blanck). however, you NEED to have ENGINEERS if you are going to design a convergence of luggage, apparel, clothing, gadgets, technology, and whatnot (basically, clothing that allows you to carry alot of gadgets, use them easily, access them easily without taking them out of their respective pockets, and not look like you have anything on you, and not FEEL like you have anything on you. which was the original idea)