At first glance, our new two-way zip performance top may look like a cycling jersey (and we wouldn't fault you for using it as such), but the intentional details of this unique performance garment were designed to specifically align with a small avalanche of feedback from our men's community design chats shortly after we released the women's Nova Crop last Spring. Make no mistake, this is a top with nuance, and the result is our most versatile performance top to date—after 11 months of development, it's finally race-tested and ready to go for any performance moment that matters.
Now rewind to those discussions, where the message was clear and simple—"we want a top option with pockets."
That straightforward request set the wheels in motion. As our Chief Designer, Ardith Singh, began putting pen to paper, the feedback—both subtle and not so subtle—kept pushing us toward something new and different.
It showed up and spoke to us subliminally in our Instagram Q&A's...
... While connected insights surfaced during deep discussions over late-night pizza with our running friends at our Bleecker Street store, with Ardith's conversational receipts echoed to the team in Slack messages and follow-up notes to the rest of the design team
At face value, the request had crystallized into a simple concept, but the execution was anything but straightforward. The design challenge was to merge the classically relaxed drape of a running performance top with the compressive elements necessary to make the pockets functional. Runners are used to the feel of a singlet, not the aerodynamically optimized, fully compressed fit typically engineered for the cycling crowd.
That’s where Ares Flex™ came in. This fabric system proved to be the optimal solution—its spandex base provides the right amount of stretch and recovery, while its lightweight mesh construction ensures ease of movement. The result? A top that offers just enough compression to allow the pockets to function at full utility without making a dramatic experiential leap from other performance tops in our lineup.
The pocketing system itself initially mirrored the top-center back placement used in our women's tops. But after multiple rounds of testing, we found that shifting the pocket slightly lower on the back neck struck the perfect balance between convenience and comfort.
The coup-de-grace if you will - a two-way zipper system—a feature we've incorporated into all of our full-zip jackets—added here for that extra ounce of performance and styling versatility.
And if you’ve made it this far, we’ve got one last update: In addition to the sleeved top, a sleeveless version is coming this summer.
