Blue Label Diving Thailand Dealer – Fourth Element
Since April 2015 we are a Fourth Element dealer here in Thailand in Phuket and at our facility in Bangkok.
Ben Reymenants explains why we have chosen to sell Fourth Element.
In the past 25 years of diving, I have seen quite a few trends in dive apparel; in the beginning there were the black rubber suits, famous from the Cousteau movies, with the typical yellow trimming on the sides.
Then the two-piece free-diving suits came along, featuring a highly uncomfortable crotch strap and a bottle of soap to actually be able to get inside the thing. Then the era of the fluorescent body glove type neoprene full suits. Custom wetsuit tailors popped up left right and centre and divers found it hilarious to become a diving superhero; spiderman would fly along the reefs, followed by superman.
Nowadays the color schematics of wetsuits are a bit more tempered as divers try to blend in and keep their suits looking good after a few years without colors fading the the sunlight.
But overall, suit designs focused generally on one thing when: comfort OR fashionable, never both… until Fourth Element came out with their proteus suits: suits that would attract free-divers as scuba divers because of the sleek design, the extremely conformable fit and fabric, all fit into an extremely attractive wetsuits.
Fourth Element managed to add at least an extra mm of thermal protection by making their suits absolutely semi dry with patented seals, double panels and smooth neoprene on strategic places.
For the tropical divers, the thermocline range stylishly replaces heavy neoprene for a very light micro-fleece, made windproof and absolutely weightless in the water. or their new westuit Xenos, available from June 2015. This has more colour than the Proteus wetsuits and are not semi dry. These come in 3mm, 5mm and 7mm and still have the hydro-lock seals on wrists and ankles.
With the Thermocline Divers can easily drop 2kg/4lbs of lead by using this new way of thermal protection. Thermocline is the art of diving in your pyjama’s and actually looking cool.
Looking cool should come 2nd when considering diving equipment or at least that’s what your dive instructor should be telling you. functionality first, then looks. That attitude seems to change in recent years. In the end, nobody wants to look uncool when enjoying their favourite sport and this goes on for their entire range. From beach apparel to expedition dry bags: all is beautifully branded and made as functional as possible, leaving to stone unturned.
This of course comes at a price. where products are manufactured in 6 different countries, all products are finalised and subjected to a stringent quality control process in the UK before being expedited all over the world. The suits are not cheap, but a quick close up reveals minute finishing details, backed by a serious warranty service should your product show early signs of failure.
Blue Label Diving has been sponsored by Fourth Element for the past 6 years, so we have had ample time to test wetsuits, dry suit underwear and the travel range. We did our best to destroy as much as we could, but fruitless. the wetsuits passed the 1000 dives test and the travel bags passed the 100 flights vandalism.
We therefore decided to start selling the brand in our facilities as well in our online shop Fourth Element Thailand..coming soon!