Because we’re all sick of tearing our trousers to shreds during a session, The Dyneema® Project have just dropped a short film which shows a new ultra-durable skate denim being put through its paces by some of Europe’s own finest bowl-riders.
Durable Denim® they call it, and it could solve one of the most inevitable (and embarrassing) problems of skateboarding: ripping up your trousers, tearing off your skin and having to skate home with your grazed arse hanging out.
I’ve been saying it so much now that it feels a bit like my mantra or something, but skateboarding really is all about slamming, over and over again, relentlessly into the cold hard floor. That’s just what it’s all about for me… I dunno, maybe I’ve just hit my head too many times.
It doesn’t matter how good you are, how long you’ve skated; it doesn’t matter where you’re from, why you skate, or how you skate; if you skate, you’re going to fall over. Alot. That’s why the sort of products that really last in our industry are the ones which make it not such a nightmare when you get up again.
Durability and flexibility, that’s the balance you’ve got to strike. You need enough movement to adapt to land (or not) a trick, and enough durability so you wont rip your shit up in the process. We’ve seen Nike release shoes which are so durable it feels like you’re wearing small tanks for shoes, we’ve seen stretchy jeans which cater for even the most tucknee-layback-disco-leg-fiend, but it’s oh so rare that the two come together.
It would appear that that’s where something like The Dyneema® Project comes in. Officially put, “Dyneema®, the world’s strongest fiber™ is DSM’s premium brand for Ultra High Molecular Weight PolyEthylene (UHMWPE) fiber, UD, tape and fabrics. Dyneema® combines maximum strength with minimum weight and is extremely durable.” But in layman’s terms, that means it’s probably going to sort us right out, though not without an-equally superlative price tag. However, if we’re gonna’ pay the big bucks for something saying it’s skate-proof anyway, we may as well do it for something that really does do what it says on the tin.
The proof? It comes in the form of a trip to the legendary Marseille Prado Bowl – home of the RedBull bowl comps and some of the continents flowiest-flowbots. Tim Zom (NL) and local French skaters Samuel Geoni and Michael Kaba are the lucky heads to don the Durable Denim® in ‘Love of the Fall’. We see them taking some of the sexiest transition in Europe, and hitting the ground hard, with the jeans taking the brunt of the abrasion.
I actually have had the opportunity to test out Dyneema® Composites myself in the past, (by test, I mean repeatedly go at with a stanley knife) and they are unfathomably strong. So let’s hope some of our beloved brands get their hands on some of this stuff and put it to work, because I just tore a pair of my favourite Dickies and the breeze is starting to get to me.
