The simple and minimalistic design of Royal Enfield motorcycles makes them a perfect canvas for customisation. A few years ago, Royal Enfield riders had to approach the after-market custom stores to get their bikes dressed up to their liking. But things have changed now and the customers have a range of add-ons to choose from the company’s official accessory portfolio.
Interestingly, the love of Royal Enfield purists goes beyond owning and riding these retro-inspired motorcycles. Many of them choose to express their affection for the brand by making the Royal Enfield gear and apparels a part of their lives. And while some of these riders just check out the available options and pick their favourites, others who want to stand out might want to customise their wearables as well. For such fanatics, Royal Enfield has introduced ‘Make-it-Yours’ or ‘MiY’ online initiative for helmets and t-shirts. As can be guessed by the name, it allows one to create their own style of helmets and t-shirts online, and get it delivered at their doorsteps.
Royal Enfield was kind enough to let us try out their MiY initiative, show some creativity and get the materialised form of it delivered. Starting with helmets, the level of customisation one can execute is commendable. There are three helmet styles available - open face, full face, and Urban Trooper (a visor-less, retro-style lid with a huge eye-port). After choosing the shell design, one can opt for their choice of shell colour, internal fabric colour, decal, and paint finish (matte or gloss). Moreover, you can also add two lines of text on the helmet shell. However, each line has to be limited to 14 characters and you don’t get to choose the placement spot of the text as it comes preset.
Depending on your chosen helmet type, RE offers a variety of visors as well. While the full-face lid comes with a single standard visor option, you do get to choose its shade from clear or yellow tinted. Meanwhile, the open face helmet can be had with one of the three types of visors – bubble, chopper, and peak (which is just a small plastic beak on top). As for the urban trooper, it can be accompanied by a motocross-style goggle.
I like my ride and gear to be understated which means the black full-face helmet with gloss finish was a perfect choice. But then a bit funky touch does no harm, so I opted for the set of decals with random tag lines and cartoon symbols. Now, to add a bit of contrast to the black shell, I chose the brown colour for the fabric and yellow tinted shade for the visor. Now, as can be seen in the screenshot above, my creation is a nice blend of subtlety and boldness, exactly how I like my belongings to be.
Moving on to the t-shirt, after selecting its base colour, one can design its front and back sections separately. There are a host of add-ons available in the form of funky prints and badges. You can also choose to feature the illustration of one of the Royal Enfield motorcycles on both the sides of the t-shirt. I chose Navy blue as the base colour while pasting the picture of a flying Himalayan on the front and the Continental GT 650 at the back, both bikes I truly admire in RE’s fleet.
The overall experience of creating your own custom helmet and t-shirt on Royal Enfield’s Make-it-Yours platform is profoundly seamless, thanks to the cleanly laid out content on these pages and intuitive user interface. I particularly liked the smooth movement of objects in the 360-degree viewing feature.
To inspect the fit and overall quality of my custom helmet and t-shirt in flesh, you and I will have to wait for them to be delivered by Royal Enfield, which might take a few more days. And once they come, we will be back with a new blog, taking a closer look at the resultant products. Till then, stay tuned to BikeWale.
