Layering Over Wet Clothing

The waterproof breathable ShellTA fabric was selected for a number of reasons, chief among them is that it sucks water off wet clothing worn under it. This is really useful if you are using it to sit out a squall or as a wet weather changing room to change your layering system, perhaps by adding a mid-layer or Over Shell. Water trapped between these layers can cause dampness to diffuse inwards (reverse breathability) and the more moisture you can remove from your layers the better they insulate. If just 10% of the air in your insulation is replaced by water, more than 70% of the insulation is lost!

When the outer fabric of your membrane softshell or hardshell saturates,  breathability reduces to virtually zero. The ShellTA will help dry these layers and allow their breathability to recover. (How long this takes also depends on the weather conditions and activity levels.)