Rapha, nice but a bit pricey?

Would have to disagree with you on some of the points about gloves. I guess it depends on which gloves your talking about but my R+PS track gloves are the best summer (even though I'm still wearing them in november) full finger gloves i've ever bought. There really soft and hard wearing leather which fit really well, with all the reinforcement/padding in the right place
I've had mine for six weeks now and they don't smell at all. My experince with leather gloves is that they hardly smell at all even with some heavy sweating (probably due to leather's antibacterial properties) . It was the clarino palms on my Charge oven gloves that began to honk, not the leather backs
As far as being impossible to wash well, I discovered you can safely put leather gloves in the washing machine without any ill effects(I put the oven gloves in the wash as the clarino palms stunk so much) as long as you dont use any detergent and feed the leather daily for about five days after - I used granger leather glove balm
I agree with you that they're too expensive at full price and got mine in the clearance

Made the mistake of buying the white one's... They do not stay white.

The other gloves I had were the pro team ones - which are very nice but stitching and stretchy back panel smell bad very quickly - also bought in white, also a big mistake.

Each to his own and all that

Wrong.

see above :P