Last week, I had a rather miserable bike ride home in the rain, and tweeted as much when I’d managed to dry off a little. A few hours later, I got an email from Abe Burmeister, the CEO of Outlier, telling me about his office-friendly and water-resistant bike trousers. Would I like to try a pair? I would — and in fact I’m wearing them today. I rode them in to work in the drizzle this morning and my legs stayed nice and dry; I then rode up to a meeting with Art Capital Group on the Upper East Side and back through Central Park. They’re certainly comfortable — and they’re more presentable than the jeans I usually wear. If you didn’t know they were bike trousers, you probably wouldn’t guess.

But after reading Alex’s blog entry about the Rapha bespoke cycling suit today, a pair of off-the-peg cycling trousers clearly isn’t going to cut it. The only problem is that I very much doubt Timothy Everest is going to offer to make me one of these things to try out — and weirdly I don’t have £3,500 to spend on looking particularly natty while riding my $300 bicycle. I might have to make do with the Outlier trousers after all.