I will be a voice of dissent.
I used to wear armored gloves. Pretty good pair of alpinestars. the stitching started coming apart after a single riding season (they went through some heavy rains). Now I wear deerskin ropers, from aero stitch. They are not armored, but a much better glove in my opinion. They cost less. They last longer. They allow for a much better sense of touch. They fit better. They stay just as cool in the heat as a mesh glove. With silk liners, they become pretty decent cool weather gloves. I have been down in them, and they protected my right hand, which scraped on the pavement, completely. This is more than I can say for my textile jacket: I had burn marks all over my right forearm.
I also used to wear moto-specific boots. They were okay. They not the most expensive boots but they weren't cheap. Tourmasters, I believe, was the brand. They did not last (again, hard riding, lots of miles in rain, heat, stop and go dabbing, etc.). Now I wear a pair of georgia work boots--the kind with zippers instead of laces, a leather strap to keep them tight. The leather is super thick and they offer at least as good protection as the moto specific boots, though the moto boots had some plastic plates in them.
There was a study in Australia--moto safety guru David Hough wrote a piece about it--that showed people riding on the street got just as good of protection from sturdy work boots and good leather gloves as they did from moto specific gear.
I do wear a moto specific jacket (icon) and pants (revit), and I am somewhat satisfied with them, but I do hope to experiment with a light leather surplus flight jackets--goat skin or deer skin--to see if I can improve on them, at least in certain riding situations.
On the whole, i feel that with moto gear the emphasis is too often on armor, too seldom on durability, comfort, ease of movement, and a lot of other things that help us to avoid crashing in the first place.