Ibex Wooly Briefs
(an Ibex exclusive for Rivendell)

Ibex makes these for us in the USA. It's basically a wind-brief minus the windshield and the extra layer of crotch wool. That's the custom part.

And it came about because we've talked to the Ibexers many times over the last several years, and like the people, like the company, like the goods, and when our Norweigian Devold undies climbed to just over $40 (but they're worth it), it seemed reasonable to offer an entry-level model for less. 

Everybody needs underwear, and for cycling, the woolies are the best we've used, but not everybody is going to spring for the Devolds. We started selling them at $24 or so, years ago, and that was high then, too. But you get hooked on them at $24, and you can follow them to the low thirties, maybe to the mid-thirties. Some will drop off at the high thirties (in this bad economy), and then at over $40, it's just gets hardand our profit, even at that, isn't sustainable. It's like a favor at the current price, but no matter how you slice it, more than $40 underwear doesn't seem like a favor. That's why we needed cheaper wool underwear.

These Ibex undies aren't cheap, but they may be the least expensive all wool, M.U.S.A. underwear in the land, and they're as low as we can price them, for sure. Perfect.

The color will probably be grey, although in the interest of keeping the cost down, we'll allow other neutral colors to get in on the deal. If there are perfectly good underwear-sized scraps of perfect 18.8 micron underwear wool lying around the sew-shop, we've given our blanket approval to take them sewn into underwear. That took an extra dollar or so off the price. They are underwear, after all, and it shouldn't matter.

By the way: No returns on underwear.  It don't matter if you don't even open them. It's the law, and if you think we want to go into the slammer for taking returns on undies, you're morosely mistaken.

Ibex's official  sizing (by waist, in inches):

28 - 30 Small
32 - 34 Medium 
36 - 38 Large
40 - 42 XL