Seven Til Midnight Stretch Satin Gauntlet Gloves

I needed some long gloves for a burlesque night, and loved these straight away as I personally prefer fingerless gloves... I find them more functional...

The gloves are perfect for what I needed them for, although I found that the ribbons started fraying after about a day, which was disappointing from my favourite brand.

I'd recommend them, though I think the quality is a little less than to be desired, and the cost of them may be a little off-putting in future.

I do like these gloves and they are lovely, although there are a few drawbacks to them which I will endeavour to explain!

Packaging

If you’ve ever bought anything from the Seven Til Midnight range, the packaging won’t surprise you. These gloves/gauntlets come folded in a plastic bag with tasteful pink and black tab on the top. There probably is slightly more packaging than there really needs to be, but nothing too bad. Nicely presented, and would make a respectable gift.

Materials

The product is nicely made and the quality of the materials is reasonable. The main body of the gloves is shiny satin, which I must say is slightly more flimsy and shinier than it appears in the product photos which makes it look a bit more ‘cheap’. If you’re planning on wearing these with other satin items, it might show this up. I also accidentally caught a nail on these, and although the effect was not major, it didn’t seem to be very pucker resistant. £11 might be a little more than I think these gloves are really worth, but not unreasonably so.

However, the ribbon is only single-sided (only shiny on one side) and the ends aren’t even finished – even without fiddling with them and not wearing these gloves for very long, the ends of the ribbons are starting to fray. Were this a cheaper product, I’d be willing to overlook this but for £11 and from a brand that’s slightly more upmarket than the cheaper stuff on Lovehoney, I was expecting a little better. It is possible to remove the ribbons and replace them with your own if you want to accessorise with your outfit, which is a good thing, but it still doesn’t make up for the lesser quality ribbon that comes with it.

Being a sewing nerd, I checked the eyelets out, and they are just inserted in the stretch fabric with no interfacing to stop the stretching there (an experienced sewer knows that this is something you just don’t do). Although they seem to be staying in place for now, might not be such a great combination if you have wider arms that causes the satin, and therefore the eyelet holes to stretch, which will result in the eyelets popping out.

I can also agree with the previous review about the slightly sloppy stitching with the ends sticking out.

Wearing

The gloves fit well. I have what I’d call average sized arms, and they seem to fit perfectly. Thanks to the adjustable ribbons, as well as the satin being stretchy. I don’t foresee that anyone should have a problem getting these gloves to fit, and there is plenty of slack in the ribbon if you need to adjust them. Although I don’t foresee any problems getting these to fit for anybody, I will advise that I think there has been some trickery going on in the photography. As I said earlier, I have average sized arms and hands, and to wear these I have the ribbons done up pretty much all the way, with no gaps in between to show my skin. This is probably nitpicking now, but I quite like the look of skin in between the gap (after all, if you didn’t you’d just buy plain gloves/gauntlets) and I refuse to believe that the model in pictures has arms a good inch or two wider than I do. Loosening them makes them sag a little and slip down. Shame.

Having said all this, these can be a good alternative to standard gloves as they keep your fingers free for precision work (I go to a lot of burlesque nights and dress up for it - removing gloves can be a pain to get money out of my purse, but not with these!), and if wearing them for the bedroom, it’s easy to slip the glove part off your hand and onto your wrist to make for easy hand jobs (or whatever else you want to do with your hands) without taking them away from the outfit.

Summary

All in all, these aren’t bad gloves and I do quite like them. Are they sexy? Yes. Are they practical? Yes. On the flip side, are they made from quality materials? Not quite. Are they value for money? Again, not quite.

They are nice gloves, and were they from a different brand for a cheaper price I would probably have been singing their praises, but for £11 and from a brand that seems to be about quality, I found myself somewhat disappointed.

I love the look of gloves and gauntlets, but tend to steer clear of them because of my rather lumpy arms: short with thick upper arms and broad shoulders does not a dainty damsel make! However, the Seven Til Midnight range is quite clever at making those of us who are not perfectly proportioned look rather lovely, so I put my doubts aside for these. Whilst I'm still not entirely sold, they aren't as bad as I'd feared.

The Build Quality

The material is wonderful, very comfortable and soft, not at all scratchy, and thick enough that I don't see them snagging or tearing any time soon. The eyelets are very sturdy, and the lace of a high quality (so no stretching or fraying in the middle of the evening). The one flaw I found was that the ends of the stitching was a little messy, with small strands poking out. They are small enough that they can be tucked back or just ignored, but I found it a little off-putting, especially as the hand-end was a little loose on me and thus wouldn't pin a tucked thread out of sight.

The Fit

They're quite stretchy, but not amazingly so, although the lacing means they're easy enough to resize for someone larger. I did find that they were a little less fitted than I'd like around the wrist even on the tightest lacing, so a 6" wrist or slimmer might find these go a little on the baggy side. As I mentioned, I have chunky arms - 9.5" at the thickest point - so it was only around the wrist itself that the fit was off.

The Look

I still felt a little mannish, and the rather blocky style of the gauntlets didn't do much for that. However, I think that the main problem was that they weren't quite fitted enough across the knuckles and hands, so they felt a little like the ends of the sleeves on a baggy sweater. My partner thought they looked lovely, so that may just be my own prejudices, but I'd say unless you're confident of how delicate you look, or are long and thick enough to fill these to stretchiness, they won't help you feel much more feminine. That said, I could see myself wearing them if I was going out as part of a modernish 'pretty punk' style outfit, teamed up with a corset, jeans and chunky boots, or something else rather butch-girly.