Experience this story and others in HIGHArt, a print magazine by Highsnobiety, available from retailers around the world and our online store.
Gloves are not accessories. They’re essentials. If you leave your house and forget your earrings, watch, water bottle, or pocket knife, you might decide to trek on without them. If you forget your gloves in the wrong kind of weather, however, you better believe you’re booking it back home. Gloves keep you warm, protect you at work, and generally add a layer of security to your outfit. Selecting the right ones for the right situation can be an arduous task. To help you make that choice, we got hands-on with some of this winter’s best gloves.
True to its name, the HEAT 3 Special Force quite literally brings warmth to your hands thanks to its modular design. If ACRONYM were ever to make gloves (Errolson, if you’re reading this…), they’d look, feel, and work like HEAT’s. Designed for the German and Austrian militaries, you know they’re not playing around. The HEAT 3 Special Force features a mitten and thumb flap that can be folded down to reveal the integrated liner. An extra pocket on the back of the hand provides storage — just like those Prada gloves that went viral this season — while catch straps ensure you don’t drop one in the snow.
For more fans of military-grade hand coverings, the M-Pact Coyote is intended for everything ranging from military drills to maintenance and repair. The gloves are as rugged as they look, featuring thermoplastic rubber impact protection across the knuckles (just in case you feel like punching the wall after the CDG Foamposites sell out at Dover Street Market). Internal fingertip reinforcements mean these gloves hit above their weight in more ways than one, while the synthetic leather on the outside makes the glove touchscreen compatible. Don’t you love it when you can swipe through TikTok without taking your gloves off?
If the M-Pact Coyotes are like a tank, think of the Rho as your sports car. Somehow, everything Arc’teryx makes looks cool AF, and these minimalist jams are no different. The glove is super lightweight and keeps warm extremely well on its own (surprisingly, even), but it’s so thin you could also use it as a liner and combine it with something more rugged should the weather require it.
Ultra-tech performance gloves are great, but you haven’t felt luxury until you’ve slipped on Jacquemus’ leather-trimmed shearling mittens. Not only are they some of the warmest and most comfortable gloves I have ever had the pleasure of putting on, they have the added functionality of making you look like a teddy bear. The gloves are made out of 100 percent lambskin leather and feature a strap across the wrist with subtle Jacquemus branding on it. If there ever were a Maybach-equivalent in the glove world, this is it.
Before I had Outdoor Research’s Highcamp 3-Finger Gloves in hand, I was incredibly skeptical. Having never worn Tabi shoes, I was unsure the goat-like trend should be encouraged to hop up to our hands. Once on, however, all my doubts vanished, as the fit was incredibly intuitive. A synthetic insulation means the gloves don’t sacrifice weight for warmth, while a waterproof and windproof exterior sits atop a liner that, when unveiled, is touch-screen compatible. Imagine a Tabi GORE-TEX Nike Air Force 1 High, and you aren’t even scratching the surface of the functionality of this three-finger glove.
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