Rynus Charisma Jacket

I covered the Rynus Ruah jacket in part one of this three-part series on Rynus motorcycle clothing. I’m not sure why I decided to write about the Ruah first, when the Charisma is the “top-of-the-line” Rynus jacket, but no matter.

Rynus also makes the “Genesis” jacket, and it holds the number three spot in the lineup. The Genesis is also a nice-looking jacket with a perforated leather front and it comes in a stunning white/red or black/white/red color combination. A variety of other products, including textile jackets, jeans, gloves and other accessories fill out the rest of the Rynus lineup.

The Charisma and Ruah jackets are similar in many ways; they both use the same Rynus “premium” 1.2 to 1.4 mm leather; they have the same shoulder and elbow armor; the back padding and the Rynus “360 Degree” 3M retro-reflective fabrics sewn into the design in a way that makes them part of the overall design.

But the Charisma has been “kicked up a notch”, as the saying goes, in the styling department. It’s not “Boy Racer” stuff, but the jacket has a touch more of the Rynus unique look. It’s sort of like taking the Ruah jacket and cranking up the style knob a couple of degrees.

For instance, the white or light colored leather on the Charisma jacket has just a bit more of the pearlescent sheen to it, which gives it a richer look. It’s not apparent in these photos, because contrasty white with black is notoriously hard to photograph, so the leather here looks much whiter than it does in real life. Think of a high-quality white pearl and you’ve got it.

Actually, I think what happened is when we were post-processing the photos, the pearlescent color came out looking less than white, and we ended up brightening it a bit too much, but I think you can get the idea in a couple of the photos below.

Rynus Charisma Jacket

The shoulders on the Charisma have an extra styling touch, with the red leather strip and an oval piece of chromed plastic that surrounds the muted Rhino head logo inside. It’s obviously not functional, but definitely adds some flair.

The back of the jacket has a cool-looking almost-3D Rhino head logo sewn on, and the rear vents are covered by zippers on either side, but there are four rear vents on the Charisma, two up top and two more underneath. The reflective material shows as the vertical stripe in the rear and the horizontal strip along the bottom.

The front of the jacket has a sort of molded- or pressed-in Rynus logo up at the top of the left shoulder, just above the few perforated vent holes.

One of the most dramatic styling differences is the more outspoken “Alien” rib treatment on the Charisma jacket. You can see in the photo above that the “ribs” were again used as part of the design in this area that is pretty much ignored by other manufacturers for styling purposes. Pretty ingenious, I would say!

The “ribs” hide some vent holes, covered by metal grommets. The horizontal “ribs” are made from some sort of rubbery plastic material. Look at the leatherwork here and the way the light-colored leather swirls around and is incorporated into the design.

There are a few other styling differences on the Charisma jacket, including a clear strip of vinyl that delineates the light-colored leather from black at the chest. It’s difficult to see in the photos, but there’s a wider section of this clear vinyl out towards the side of the chest that also includes a tiny Rhino head logo. Other differences include some extra attention that went into the leather piping here and there along the seams.

The Charisma jacket also features the same number of pockets as the Ruah, including the wallet pocket just inside the left placket, also with the same attention to detail on its zipper pull and sewing.

Conclusion

The Charisma jacket has more of the unique Rynus style, which may take a few looks to appreciate because it is different. It’s interesting to note that both of these jackets pretty much map feature-by-feature to any other leather street jacket out there, yet the stylists have been able to make the common uncommon.

The quality is very high and the jackets are reasonably priced for a leather jacket with this type of construction and style. The Charisma is about $60.00 more expensive than the Ruah jacket, which isn’t much for the extra touches. What’s nice is that the construction of both is the same, so you’re not sacrificing protection or quality when choosing one over the other, it’s simply a matter of style.

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