PAN

So does that sound entirely unnecessary to you? It might until a cord snags on something someday and rips the earphones off your head or takes your PSP out of your hands and offers it to the sidewalk. Besides snag protection, the PAN, coupled with engineered fabrics like FineTex®, makes listening to your music in the pouring rain relatively worry free. To test that particular capability, I stood in the shower and listened to Guns N’ Roses’s November Rain twice though. (we decided against including photos of this particular test as he neglected to wear any pants for the pictures. -ed.) Now, for the case modding crowd reading this, you might think you can replicate these capabilities with some well placed slices of an Exact-o knife in your pockets, but the true PAN system consists of reinforced eyelets that do a great job of keeping the holes from becoming tears or runs.

In addition to the PAN, Scottevest clothing boasts magnetic closures (patent pending) and their DeepPockets™ which claim to ensure your valuable gadgets don’t fall out during strenuous activity even when you forget to zip them closed. I have to assume this was an innovation inspired by the needs of law enforcement, as most tech-enthusiasts aren’t exactly known for their athleticism. But a jog around a local park with an old Palm in my pocket, gave me the confidence to try dropping my Creative Zen MP3 player in the clothing’s different pockets and then jumping on my inversion table without going to any special effort securing it. After all the trials, not only did the player never fall out, but my face is all red and my back feels much better. But seriously, having lost my last Pocket PC and at least two cellphones to accidental dropouts, I now get a measure of peace from hearing the satisfying snap of the magnets pulling my pockets closed by themselves.

Another touted feature of the Scottevest line is the previously mentioned weight management system. In spite of the name, it has nothing to do with your growing gaming gut and everything to do with your keys, wallet, PDA, pocket knife, and cellphone all weighing up to 3 lbs.. And since society is still saying no to purses for men, and fanny packs have become the exclusive province of the Europeans, we don’t have many places beyond the standard four pant pockets to place these things. The result is our pockets bulge terribly and make us look like we are smuggling bricks. The Scottevest solution is to attach pockets to the waistband of the pants and even to each other, supposedly allowing the contents’ weight to be borne be the other pockets and the waistband or belt. In the shirt and the jackets, their solution is to allow the pockets to either be attached at the shoulder or to hang free without being sown to the lining of the jacket. Supposedly this keeps your toys and tools from pulling at the jacket’s seams and distorting your silhouette. So that is the idea, but does it work?


To test this feature, I followed Scottevest’s advice to the letter. As a help to new owners, every SeV product comes with all of its pockets containing a card suggesting what it can be used for, like your keys, cellphone, PDA, or laptop (more on that later). I selected one of the items for every pocket, placed them inside and strolled around. I then took the same items and tried to fit them all into normal pants. This I tried with all of the SeV pants I was testing – the Hidden Cargo Pants (khakis stylish enough for church and job interviews), the Ultimate Cargo Pants (with the zip off pants to shorts capability) and the Lounge Pants, each of which have between eleven and eighteen pockets. Then I repeated the process in front of a friend who had stopped by.