The world at your fingertips REVIEW: Etre Touchy Gloves (£19.99) and Fivepoint Gloves (£24.99)

By Olivia Abbott on November 26th 2010

Olivia Abbott lets her fingers do the walking in some rather clever gloves...

It can get very frustrating trying to take photos outdoors in cold weather. Gloved hands are not terribly compatible with fiddly ISO and aperture buttons and precision setting of focusing rings. But when you’re hanging around waiting for an elusive bird to show its beak or a reluctant cloud to make its unhurried passage across the face of the sun, going glove-free isn’t a sensible option – you risk ending up with fingers so numb they’re as clumsy as if you’d worn the gloves anyway.

Fingerless gloves might seem an obvious option – or even those ones like you used to get as a child, with a sort-of coverlet bit that turned the gloves into mittens, but the first are as useless as no gloves at all, and the second.. well, they’re not exactly stylish are they?

So welcome, then, Etre Touchy Gloves. These clever and rather elegant gloves are thumb-and-forefinger-less but only on the very tips, so you can do all the fiddly things you need to, while all the rest of your hand and digits stay nice and warm. Which means the blood circulating through the exposed bits stays warm too.

Supersmart, supersoft

They gloves are made of supersoft new wool and come in a variety of rather smart designs. It was a decidedly nippy winter’s day when I put an understated black-with-grey-trim pair through their paces, and I loved them. They were warm and comfortable – not itchy or scratchy – well fitting and cosy and I was able to do all the fiddly things I need to do take a photograph. The only thing they didn’t do was make my photography skills any better. Shame.

Etre Touchy Gloves are aimed at photographers and people using touchscreen gadgets on the go – but the company has already launched another new product; the Fivepoint gloves (£24.99) for people using iPods and iPhones and the like. It’s common knowledge that you can’t answer your iPhone with a pair of gloves on, but the fingertips on Fivepoint gloves are made of a specially designed conductive material which means that touch-screen applications work with them.

These are also made of supersoft lambswool and are as comfy and cosy as the Touchy Gloves, and they really do work, so anybody who’s had the frustration of trying to answer their iPhone or get into their iPad with gloves on will really appreciate them. And while they’re perhaps not as elegant as the Touchy Gloves, having all your fingertips a different colour from the main part of the glove is fun and funky so great for the younger touch-sensitive-gadget freak.

• For more information and to buy online visit etretouchy.com or fivepointgloves.com

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