There have been a couple of races I've been in where glove selection would have been especially important. For example, at Reston in the rain a few years ago (or rather, after Reston in the rain, in the ER) I sure wished I had on a pair of full-fingered MTB gloves with padded knuckles. Most of the time, however, the most important attribute of a summer glove to me is the color. It has to match the kit. Uncoordinated gloves is one of those details that make you look like a fred, even if everything else about you is smooth and pro. But matching gloves don't make you look pro - they only keep you from looking not pro. You don't get points for it; it's just the absence of a negative.
Custom gloves by the same company that makes your kits are preferred, but I don't have those. Instead, I have been wearing Pearl Izumi Gel-Lites because they have the same blue to purple fade as the vaunted Artemis kit:
The only hope these gloves have to be cool is when paired with an Artemis kit. (Also, the PowerTap wheel in the picture is still for sale. Email me if you're interested.)
It's uncanny how exact the match is. Granted PI isn't the most "pro" of brands, but my opinion is that the color coordination neutralizes the mass market positioning.
I'd also like to point out something else about gloves. When you're setting your brake levers on your bars and trying to find the perfect position that allows you to reach your levers from the drops and still be comfortable on the hoods (particularly challenging if you have deep drop bars and/or smaller hands) make sure you do it with your gloves on. And if reach is a problem, consider switching to gloves (and bar tap) with less padding. You can have a perfect reach on a naked bar with naked hands, only to have to crane your wrist around to reach your brakes from the drops once the bar is wrapped and your hands gloved. It's a delta of about 1/2" in padding, which is the difference between that lever cradling comfortable inside your knuckle and grasping at it with your fingertips.
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