Oh, the quick change. Immortalized by Lori Petty in Point Break, it’s a move that takes practice to pull off. Once skilled, one can enjoy any number of sweaty, dirty endeavors and still appear at her next obligation clean and appropriately dressed, without stopping at home (or in one of those gross Seward Highway permanent port-a-potties) to change. Personally, I bring my favorite simple skirt everywhere. It’s easy enough for me to pull my bike shorts on underneath and then ditch the skirt, all while standing next to the car, and then just reverse the process on the way home.
That doesn’t work for everyone, though, evidently, for there’s a new product on the market intended to make the quick-change all that much easier. Qwik Wrapz sent me one of their, er, Qwik Wrapz for me to try out. I was curious to see how the product varied from a regular skirt, and here’s how: the Qwik Wrapz is a velcro-based skirt wrap thing, with two slits in the sides. You wrap the skirt around you, secure it with velcro, then reach through the slits to handle your undies. Pretty simple.
I have mixed feelings here. The product is nice quality; it would almost stand alone as a skirt except for the velcro closure and the slits. That’s nice to see; it’s not just a fast-money piece of junk. The fabric is nice and the construction is solid. One glaring mistake is a) the velcro and b) the positioning of the velcro. Velcro doesn’t belong anywhere near technical fabrics. It snags them too easily; who doesn’t have a nice jersey marred by a damn velcro pull? The positioning of the velcro on the Qwik Wrapz just screams death for your base layer, because the hook side of the velcro faces in. When you wrap it around you, you’re basically pasting the Qwik Wrapz to your bike shorts, bikini, base layer, or what have you with the velcro. Switching the hook side and the loops side would help, but using buttons would be classier, stronger, and not as dangerous to expensive technical clothing.
It’s kind of a cool idea, and if you have disposable income and the need to change outside A LOT (triathletes?) the addition to hand-slits into a skirt might make you more comfortable doing so. Generally, though, I think you can accomplish a quick change with just a normal skirt. Guys – and the founder of Qwik Wrapz is a guy – might not have a skirt in their closet to serve this purpose so this product might be a good addition. It’s also a much better design than the typical “changing towel” kind of wrap. Basically, a good quality product with one (easily fixed on the part of the manufacturer) design flaw. I don’t think this is a must-have, but some people might be into it. I don’t see Tyler bothering with it (and if you can tell me her last name WITHOUT GOOGLING, honor system here people, I’ll send you my Qwik Wrap so you can try it).
Edit: Matt Marhall, founder of Qwik Wrapz, read this review and immediately decided to change the velcro configuration. So future Qwik Wrapz will have other-way-around velcro and won’t put your technical fabrics in as much danger. Nice work, Matt!
