The truly ancient (e.g. me) remember the glory days before the invention of Gore-tex and comparable fabrics.

I remember that rain jackets were regarded with great suspicion. One reason was that plastic jackets for racing cyclists were just that. They were dismissed as 'pneumonia jackets' for the sweating and then the cooling they produced. And in any case, Real Men raced in the rain and got on with it.

It was that sweating that made newer jackets suspect. There was no understanding that for sweat to be wicked to the outside air, there had to be sweat in the first place. You were never going to be totally dry in a jacket but nor would you be as drenched as without one.

The only waterproofs then, and for decades, had been all-embracing capes (only the limp-wristed wore the trousers that were also available). They spread from the handlebars and over the body. The wise tucked the back end between themselves and the saddle to stop it flying around.

I have cycling magazines from the 1950s that lament how the material of rolled up capes became stuck into an impenetrable lump. Readers wrote with suggestions of covering them in talc or bathing them in home-made solutions.

Modern plastics then took over and we cruised along enclosed in our own little world, like yellow sailing ships. With a tailwind they were a delight. In a headwind, they were trickier. In a crosswind, they were alarming.

However bad the past, of course, we suspect the new. Adventurers who wore the first jackets were quizzed and then scoffed at for what they'd paid.

Now, of course, everyone sees the point. And because of that, astonishingly, there are now advertisements for all-embracing capes, the once dismissed now being offered as a solution to the "problems" of jackets.

We're a strange lot.

Like this...

Hi Leo

I used capes but instead of your cap with a peak I had what would be referred to here Downunda as a bucket hat in the same plastic material as the cape.

I don't think I will go back to a cape however, my ShowersPass works well for me. 

I have a goretex jacket from Mountain Equipment Coop that I've had for many years. Key to me is that it completely protects me from the wind. It is also fairly rain resistant, but the problem is that though it is breathable when I am physically exerting, the humidity building up inside has me completely soaked. I'm not sure anything exists that can prevent perspiration and keep out the rain (a bit of humour here), so when it's raining, one way or the other, I am wet.

Cycling rain gear, to me, is much  more about keeping warm in unfavorable conditions than about keeping dry.

Agreed. My jacket does just that.