Atéliers Ruby

Culture

First there’s the price: £425 for a plain colour, rising to as much as £600 for a pattern and more for a limited edition. The price may be a shock, but Ruby have elevated helmet design and manufacture beyond pure safety, and well beyond passing trends and fashion, to create a helmet that can be fetishised. On the surface, it’s a handsome, but optimistically priced open-face helmet, just like, on the surface, an Aston Martin V12 Vantage is a good-looking, two-door car. But hold a Ruby Pavillon in your hands, let it encase your head, and it becomes something different. It possesses the quality to convert sceptics. It converted this one.

Legendary Karl Lagerfeld and Ruby proprietor Jerome Coste get cosy

Ruby is the life and love of Frenchman Jérôme Coste. He is a Hendrix-esque, 38-year-old, brought up wedged between the front seats of a Jaguar XK120 by young, hippy parents. When we meet, Coste has Lewis Leathers boots on his feet, the keys to a Yamaha SR500 street tracker in his pocket, a silk scarf around his neck and a halo of aromatic smoke.

The Ruby Belvedere with 'Shibuya' design

Coste spent a decade and a half designing clothing and equipment aimed at X-Gamers, for American companies JT and One Industries. But by 2000 he had built up skate-, BMX-, Mountain Bike-wear company, Hold-Up. Then he ran it into the ground.

‘I thought I could do everything myself,’ Coste admits. ‘But I’m bad at managing the money stuff. Finally, I crashed the company.’

A collaboration with Japanese designer Kishimoto

Perhaps it because he’s talking in a second language, but I like the fact he uses moto-terminology to describe business practises. He didn’t go bankrupt, he crashed. And what do you do after a crash? If you’re any kind of man, you get back on.

In 2001, at a crossroads in his life, Coste started thinking about creating a helmet, ‘The most beautiful and best helmet in the world’. By 2003, the project became all-consuming. By then the name, the ridged crest and overall look was set.

The ridge. At first it appears to be an attempt to differentiate a Ruby helmet from every other lid on the planet. But, after some contemplation, the lateral crest echoes ancient warriors’ helmets. More recently, it’s seen on the protective headgear of First World War French soldiers, modern day firefighters and Darth Vadar. But the ridge is just the start of these helmets’ appeal.

‘Why Ruby?’ echoes Coste. ‘Because it is four letters. It is feminine in a world of sweating, dirty guys. It evokes descriptions like precious, hard, passion… It is also the name of the engine that powered my father’s Sandford, the three-wheeled racing car he competed in when I was a boy.’

Ruby watches over you from the Helmets' leather lining

Pick up one of the company’s helmets and Ruby stares back, with her fingers crossed, from the crown of the lining. ‘She is your guardian angel,’ Coste explains. ‘She is hot and she is looking after you. And every time you put on your helmet she is wishing you “Bon Voyage”.’

If you don’t believe in the protective abilities of this curvaceous 21st century St Christopher, the spec of the helmet is of more interest. The shell is completely carbon fibre, like the bodywork of Ferrari’s FI cars or the fairing of a MotoGP bike.

‘Riding in a city is more dangerous than on a racing track, so people in the city deserve the same as a champion.’

The lining is a mix of an Alcantara-like synthetic suede and French lambskin. The standard lining colour is Cardinal Red, ‘Inspired by the interiors of British sportscars,’ says Coste. The leather goggle retaining clip on the back of the helmet contains a card the wearer is encouraged to write his medical details on. The rivets that fix the two halves of the strap to the shell look like jewels. The whole helmet, even the box it arrives in, is of a quality than makes you just want pick it up and inspect it, put it on and only reluctantly remove it.

Ruby helmets are made in China, a fact that I find a little at odds with the price tag of the entry-level Pavillon, but China is home to the only factory that make carbon shells to the quality Coste demands.

The fur wrapped Karl Lagerfeld collaboration

The helmet itself transcends fashion, but Ruby has collaborated with Maison Martin Margiela to create a limited-edition, white-washed Ruby Pavillon that has the Margiela design team’s signatures and scribbles scratched into the thin top coat of paint. French artist Honet and Anglo-Japanese designers Eley Kishomoto have created other limited editions, but the next collaboration is likely to eclipse them all – in terms of coverage is not style. Karl Lagerfeld used mink- and white rabbit fur-covered Ruby helmets in his Autumn-Winter 2009-2010 catwalk show. This led to Ruby and Lagerfeld producing 100 Lagerfeld-designed fabric covered Pavillon’s for (fair weather) riders and a further six each of the fur-covered Belvedere open-face helmets for collectors. The PETA-baiting helmets will go on the market for up to €5000.

While I’d rather risk riding without protection than resort to a €5000 mink-covered crash helmet, the whole Ruby experience remind me of the adage, ‘if you have a €100 head, get a €100 helmet.’

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13 Responses to “Atéliers Ruby”

  1. shanehearty

    Its “If you have a ten dollar head, wear a ten dollar helmet, if your head is worth more,wear a BELL”

  2. fastlemon

    Amazing – Given the staggering price of these helmets, I have a real problem with them. Anyone who rides a motorcycle or scooter without a full-face helmet is asking for trouble!!! Funny that it's always the “pretty” people who seem to do this as they clearly put fashion / style way before any considerations of safety. One only needs to look at anyone who's hit the road face first with an open-face helmet to understand where I'm coming from. Sometime ago, I was involved in someone else's mistake and impacted the road face first very hard. Thankfully, I was wearing a top of the range Arai full-face helmet. The helmet was massively damaged, in particular the facebar and visor. I received no head injuries whatsoever! Other injuries included a collarbone in three pieces, a shoulder-blade in three pieces and seven broken ribs, dislocated shoulder and fractured elbow – all of which testify as to how hard an impact I survived. Take care you fashionistas !!! As someone said, “If you've got a ten dollar head, buy a ten dollar helmet…” !!!

  3. fastlemon

    Spot on !!! The comment's originator was the late great Denny Hulme.

  4. johnstonutd

    i agree totally with fastlemon, im glad to hear that your Arai served you well, i hope youre injuries healed up ok. when i had to get a crash helmet i got one made by shark because i had heard that they did well in some tough safety tests, i also asked for the brightest colours the model came in, then put a couple of reflective stickers on it to increase visibilty a bit more! youd have to be dumb ( and pretentious )to pay £600 for a crash helmet because it looks pretty, what are you going to do? wear it or f**k it?

  5. Utter c**p,overly expensive junk. motorcycling is not about catwalk fashion rubbish,dream on.

  6. it's bizzare how fashion can permeate this arena. if ever there's one where function is more important than form, it's with helmets.

    still; i suppose there'll be some poetic justice seeing the vain with facial injuries through choosing a pretty Ruby lid, instead of a proper one.

  7. Can't really condone anything that comes close to gloating at injuries
    suffered by fellow bikers, although I appreciate your point.

    Even so, there is a world of difference in the injury risk attached to
    ragging it across the pennines, say, compared with pootling around town on a
    Vespa.

  8. meh. as far as i'm concerned, anyone who wears a mink covered, karl largerfeld helmet is better off riding full chat into a tractor driven threshing machine, be it along the pennines or down the kings road.

  9. Best of thing is that they are only designed in France,
    but made in CHINA.
    got one for free, as sample.

    Ash

  10. Paul Munro88

    what!!! these helmets are amazing anyone that dont buy one are ugly f..ks that need a full face helmet to hide there faces!!!… buy a scooter! enjoy the scenes.. thay are made of the best quailty comfortable and beat any open face helmets available… get a life u sad people safety my ass ur going 30 mph not 90 mph..

  11. Common sense says buy a full face helmet. But common sense also says get a car instead. And common sense is the most dangeropus thing in the world. It will slowly bore you to death.

  12. Stuboorad

    the helmet debate rages on.

    what to wear ?

    Wear what you want, you could argue that the increased pereferal vison from an open faced helmet actually increases safety. added to the fact that most open facers ride more within their limits and it starts to swing the other way.

    Lovely helmets but Davida are just as cool and half the price.

    if you want safety buy a marushin hi vis carbon stone one of the lightest and brightest full face helmets out there and the reduced weight could save your neck !