The Fuss Over Cycle Inspired Clothing
by anita • July 6, 2009 • News, Photos • 13 Comments
Recently, Copenhagen Cycle Chic posted “The Good News and Bad News About Cycle Chic.”
The good news is that the very simple concept of riding a bicycle in your regular [preferably fashionable in my opinion, but not a prerequisite] clothes is being picked up by the press all over the world. This is a good thing.
If you want to ride a bicycle to work or the supermarket over short distances, you do not need ‘gear’. Just open your closet.
[via Cycle Chic]
Alright so I admit, I was inspired by this post and thought, to hell with it. I am going to wear my normal work clothes on my bicycle. Now I usually commute in a t-shirt and loose fitting pants, so today I wore a collared shirt instead. I traveled pretty slowly the entire time getting to work in an hour rather than 45min, but I still arrived sweaty.
Now I know I can get away will wearing my normal clothes in the winter, but come summer, it goes out the window. This is why I really do think there is a market for functional, fashionable cycling clothes…clothes that will wick away sweat but still look hot. While I agree with Cycle Chic that slapping cycling labels on regular shoes and clothing is just a marketing gimmick (ahem Topshop), there are companies out there who put time and money into researching and testing functional clothing.
Take Outlier for example, they make high quality tailored clothing for cycling. (Though not currently for women! …they tell us a women’s line is coming soon.)
Also Patagonia although not cycling specific, makes high performance clothing that can also pass in the office.
With the increasing popularity of cycling, there should be more options for causal and commuting cyclists to look good and feel good too. Sure a trip to the store doesn’t require specialized clothing, but a trip to work in the big city could.
Bicycle Fixation makes a line of cycling knickers that, despite cheeky hidden magenta accents, remain quite office appropriate (for men).
John,
You might get away with those knickers in Brooklyn/NYC, but not in the “flyover states,” where you’ll be immediately branded as weird-freaking-o, and probably insubordinate.
I wore a standard Topshop collared shirt (and tie!) today, just went *extra* slow up the Manhattan bridge. Mine is a 20 minute ride at my regular slow speed, though. It’s funny how NYC’s current cycle commuting population skews so much towards the longer trips, as if it doesn’t occur to the many many people in between that they could be riding a bicycle and not even have to change their routine (except possibly to build in less time for getting there). That’s who needs to get the message.
My general complaint is too many of these shops are for chaps only! I love knickers, is it that much to ask that you add a bit more room for my derriere and mark them in womens sizes?
I love Copenhagen Cycle Chic – but they are simply wrong on this point. They do a great job of celebrating looking good in normal clothes on a bike. But to suggest that nobody should wear clothes specifically for cycling unless you’re racing or something is just misguided – and fundamentally misunderstands cultural, spatial, and climate differences between Copenhagen and most of the US. It’s also pretty dismissive of cyclists personal preferences. The tagline “Style Over Speed” is fine and informs most of my casual cycling. But sometimes “Comfort Over Style” is a better tagline, which informs the majority of my commuting.
I don’t want to make a big deal over it. The blog is just for fun so there’s no sense getting cranky about it. Their primary purpose is to argue that nobody HAS to wear special clothes to ride a bike – something I entirely agree with. But I also think they’ve crossed the line a few times by coming down on people who choose to wear cycle-specific clothes… But no big deal.
First off, thanks for the kind words. We are working on women’s stuff, but trying not to make too many promises, it’s been tricky so far and we’ve got a ways to go before we have some samples that stand up to par with our men’s stuff.
As for Copenhagen, we see that place as a very dangerous model for bicycle activists. While places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam make very tempting models for other locals, but that model doesn’t necessarily translate. This goes for clothing and also for the infrastructure itself. The key thing to realize is that Copenhagen and Amsterdam are both rather small and incredibly flat cities. There are no hills or large bridges to cross, and the distances from home to work are rather short. They also don’t have the heavyweight rainstorms that other places may experience.
All that adds up to a bit of a cycling paradise, one where one can wear regular clothes, ride around at 6-8 miles an hour and smile. Take that to NY and it just doesn’t work. You can’t ride that slow and expect to get to work in a reasonable amount of time. You can’t ride Dutch bikes over the East River everyday and smile about it, they are too heavy. And you can’t wear regular clothes and still handle the sort of rain that NY experiences.
In a big way however we at Outlier actually agree with the Copenhagen Cycle Chic stance. We do think you should be able to just go to any store and buy clothing and have them work on a bike. But the way we envision it, ALL clothes need to adjust to the cycle era. When designers make garments they should work as well on a bicycle as they do on a subway or in a car. It’ll take some time but as more and more people use the bike as transit it’s bound to happen.
To be honest, I’m still a little mystified as to why clothes can’t be comfortable (on the bike) AND stylish. Is it just that what is typically considered office-stylish has particular cuts that restrict movement, or is it the materials that are the limiting factor?
Bicycle Fixation is also working on women’s cuts, though the Great Recession has slowed things down for us, as well as nearly everyone else.
As for the comment above re “flyover states”: don’t sell the heartland short; we’ve sold numerous pairs of wool knicks to Indiana, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa, the Canadian Midwest, and other conservative areas such as Utah and Arizona–and to Sweden, Finland, and England, despite their chaincases and skirtguards!
Style and function matter everywhere. Bicycle use is once again, as it did in the late 1800s, driving fashion evolution…Swrve, Outlier, Rapha, our own little Bicycle Fixation, and many more…a wonderful variety of good stuff!
@John Thanks for the heads up regarding the Bicycle Fixation stuff. Love the design and can’t wait for more sizes and women’s cuts.
@Mel You know I’m always with you on this and Swrve makes women’s knickers http://www.swrvecycling.com/knickersWmnsCotton.html
@Abe Thanks for the comment! I kinda of want to make it a stand alone post. I knew some of the differences between Copenhagen and NYC, but you clearly informed me and put perspective to it so thank you for that. Regarding the women’s line, we can’t wait.
@Rick Same, thanks for jumping in on the conversation. I will be following your future lines. Looking forward to the women’s stuff.
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Hello from Tokyo, a word from CCP, an urban cycle fashion brand, handmade in Japan. We fully understand the need for functional casual clothing designed for the cyclist. Over the past five years we have shifted our attention to men’s bicycle wear, and found a great response in our local market, with over 50 cycle-related retailers around Japan carrying CCP, and over a million hits for our online shop in its first year. Tokyo is a very fashion conscious city, and a fairly flat city (even when there are hills, there is often a flat way around), which along with fairly warm weather, accounts for both the rising popularity of door-to-door bicycle commuting, out on the town bicycling, and our products, as environmentally and fiscally conscious folks move away from their cheaper home to train station bikes or their cars and begin to incorporate cycling into their lifestyle. We all ride ourselves, and are constantly developing limited production clothing we ourselves want to wear. Rigorous selection of materials is just the beginning, as our previous experience (designing fashion for 35 years) comes into play designing great-looking, highly functional, extremely comfortable riding fashion. We will be visiting NYC in the beginning of September to meet with Brooklyn artist Taliah Lempert whose bicycle paintings have graced some of our most recent shirts and caps, and also visit potential retailers in NYC. We look forward to serving you.
Mikael and I have gone a few rounds on this topic of ‘style’ a few times both in private and in public online. I appreciate what he’s doing and a shift in what’s considered appropriate cycling wear is needed in the United States, but his complete dismissal of form following function is a little bit offputting.
I live, work and bike in Copenhagen, with only a 6-mile commute, and although I ride a regular (even stylish) 3-speed bicycle, I much prefer wearing functional (a mix of cycling, running and XC-skiing) clothes and changing into work clothes after a post-ride shower (granted, far from everybody has that option) over having to go slow enough to not break a sweat or resorting to body wipes.
Copenhagen Cycle Chic (the style) is great, but it should remain an option, not a rule, and from what I’ve read of Mikael’s posts, I feel he ends up coming off as a bit of a bike fashion nazi in order to get his point across, however valid it may be.