Matuse makes some great looking wetsuits and jackets…their all black Japanese rubber kinda makes you look stealth and dangerous. The Philo jacket looks so good on you that other surfers will assume you’re a ripper (just don’t catch a wave if you don’t). Besides looking good, these wetsuit tops also do a very good job of keeping you warm (Hawaii gets cold on occassion especially when we have blustery North winds during winter and spring) and the Japanese rubber blocks most of the wind from getting through.

The only downside to these 1mm wetsuit tops is they’re sized extremely small and the rubber is really tight and not too flexible around the shoulders and arm pits. I made the mistake of buying one way to small (unfortunately I got bad advice from the surf shop I bought it from) and ended up buying one two sizes too small! Yeah, I’m an idiot, I know 🙂 Even though the suit is tight, the rubber is so restrictive that by the time I made it out into the lineup I was completely gassed and I’d stay fatigued throughout the entire session.

Last year in the spring of 2009 we had a month of unsually cold weather here in Hawaii. It was so cold that I almost broke down and bought a spring suit but alas I opted for the more manly option of a 1mm jacket top. Surfing during in this cold weather became a toss up of freezing my butt off or being warm but fatigued from the tight rubber. In the end, I decided to try the Rip Curl eBomb 3 jacket (1mm) as I just couldn’t take how fatigued my arms and shoulders would become after using the Philo jacket. The eBomb doesn’t keep me as warm as the Philo but I rather sacrifice comfort for performance and the eBomb 3 is the stretchiest jacket I’ve used yet. I haven’t tried Matuse’s wetsuits but if they’re built like their Philo model expect extreme difficulty paddling.