I’ve said it before, but it needs saying again. Gaz from NZO writes funny newsletters.
This weeks hits a little closer to home as you’ll see from below when Gaz discovers that his
shorts may have been responsible for a MTB fashion violation.
Here is the upside of trail riding apparel with low-key branding: people who wear it don’t look like they belong on a supermarket shelf. The downside: our mates can wear Nzo on the cover of an international magazine, and nobody can tell! Except us of course.
It is a weird, slightly obsessive thing we indulge in: trolling through the media, looking for our products in an editorial image.
Even if nobody else notices, there is a kind of validation involved. There we are: part of the culture. Even after 16 years, it’s good to spot an Nzo product captured in the wild.
Maybe the big guys do it. Who knows? Maybe they get issues of Southern Hemisphere magazines couriered to their glittering offices, and scan through them looking for their logos, maybe they don’t. All we know for sure is that we do.
So there it was a few months back, in a freshly minted and excellent-looking issue of Spoke: a photo of a really nice person we know, wearing a pair of our shorts. And, double bonus: the photo was shot with the label in sharp focus, leaving our hordes of fans in no doubt that their favourite brand was in print again.
The accompanying story took the edge off: it was a confession from the victim of a newly identified fashion disaster. There was a space between the bottom of the shorts leg, and the top of the knee guard. Turns out the short MUST cover that piece of leg, which is such a disgusting acre of flesh that it must remain unseen. It is referred to as a ‘twat gap’.
The article was funny enough to make us laugh out loud. It carried a solution, which was to get a new pair of shorts. Right there in black and white.
We felt the need to respond.
Firstly, microscopic examination of the image revealed that the shorts are black Nzo Kombies, last manufactured in 2006. So even if they are slightly short, their life has been very long. When they were designed, a ‘twat gap’ was something else entirely.
Secondly, much as we like the wearer of those vintage threads, we are pretty sure we never sponsored her. So at some point cash changed hands for some shorts that were deemed by the buyer to be the correct length at the time.
And in closing, there can only be a ‘twat gap’ if you wear knee pads. Which we do for laying lino or praying for a nice weekend. If you must go out planning to bang your knees, and we know some of you do, get knee pads that fit. Match them up with the ’14 model Sifters, and watch that gap disappear up your trouser leg.
Happy Trails
Glen & Gaz
