“Hélas” is French and means “unfortunately.” As in “Unfortunately, it’s raining.” Or as in “Hélas, il pleut comme vache qui pisse.” Which is also French and translates to “Unfortunately, it’s coming down like a pissing cow.” Well, learning never stops, we guess. At any rate, France shares Germany’s unfortunate location on a continent where rain is almost ubiquitous, save for a couple of days during the summer when the sun shows up for a visit shorter than Zinédine Zidane’s temper. As a result, when spring eventually arrives, everybody and their mother get hyperventilated about the rising temperatures. Spring is the harbinger of warmer weather, and it’s the spring collections issuing the proclamation that summer is finally under way.
Or so we hope. Hélas, we’re already at the end of April, and it’s still colder than your ex-girlfriend’s heart. While we’re recovering from never-ending months of winter, we’re glad that Lucas Puig’s company offers a quickstrike consolation collection of sorts. It’s packed with summery colors and lightweight materials, and it will make you want to sell your soul to the French devil for nicer weather (we’d do it, but we’ve already sold our souls for learning how to kickflip).
Anyway, the collection features a nice range of 6 panel caps in yellow, pink and white, made out of light twill, each coming with an embroidered front logo. There’s a heavier 6 panel cap in black corduroy, as well. In other 6 panel news, Hélas has dropped the popular Baller cap again, this time in black, white and beige, each featuring an embroidery of a man with an umbrella, presumably struggling not to get blown away by the harsh wind in Europe.
Speaking of wind: the quickstrike collection offers a variety of windbreakers in the form of two coach jackets and the Olympic Squad tracksuit jacket, the former two being available in black and navy blue, the latter one coming with a navy body and white upper sleeves, as well as two orange and red track stripes separating the white from the blue part of the sleeves. It also has a hood, which, naturally, the coach jacket’s don’t have. The coach jackets are pretty minimalistic, featuring a small embroidery on the left chest (the famous Hélas umbrella) and a small Hélas lettering on the back. The Olympic Squad jacket comes with the same umbrella embroidery on the chest.
Since no tracksuit is complete without a pair of track pants, Hélas has also thought of including a nice set of nylon legwear that will make you look like either a street dealer, one of the dudes from Eiffel 65 or a French professional skateboarder (or all of those). They’re available in navy and black, so pick your poison.
For people who are not into Eiffel 65 or weed cut with oregano, Hélas also offers their classic assortment of longsleeves and t-shirts. The Polo Club longsleeves are available in black and white and feature front and back prints (both of a guy holding an umbrella and riding a camel, presumably the same guy from before who got blown away to the Sahara after all). The Hélas Supersonics tee features a graphic suspiciously evocative of tennis brand Ellesse’s stylized tennis ball, while the Classic tees feature simple umbrella embroideries on their left chest areas.
All in all, though, it’s a very sportive collection, taking cues from tennis and soccer. Lucas Puig, world-famous for his uncanny talent on the skateboard, has proven time and again that French soccer-inspired clothing is quite fashionable (but then again, he could wear a potato sack and would still look cool in it). For anyone remotely interested in classic, elegant sportswear: this is the collection for you. You can buy Hélas Caps’ spring quickstrike both in store and online.
