Subscribe

Search



Down with cycle chic

Share 

Laura and Hamish have both been in the Scottish press this month, talking about bicycles, which seem to be quite the thing all of a sudden. Let’s start with Laura, who was recently talked into being interviewed and photographed for a Scotsman fashion feature about ‘cycle chic’ (basically as a favour to the writer, who we both know and like).

Lots of designers, it seems, are making new ranges designed for women who cycle, and the fashion world is taking notice. Look, there’s Agyness Deyn looking swish while peddling around New York! And look, there’s Duffy doing much the same in a Diet Coke ad! Cue newspaper and magazine features about how fashionable it is to ride a bike now. Look, here’s another one in The List magazine. ‘There’s a new world of fashion waiting to be explored!’ says the Scotsman breezily.

This is, as anyone with half a brain can surely see, a load of nonsense. Laura - whose formidable brain is usually engaged in teaching and making theatre, studying for a postgraduate degree and running a dance studio, among other things - does indeed like nice clothes. And yes, she also rides a bicycle. However, the idea that these two things are somehow connected, that she rides a bike as some kind of style statement, is ridiculous and a little insulting. Laura rides a bicycle for exactly the same stunningly obvious reason as Hamish and I do – because it gets you around town quicker and cheaper. As Hamish puts it in an article he wrote for the List this month: ‘I don’t have reasons for cycling any more than I have reasons for walking.’

This is not how the fashion world would like you to see it, though. Inspired by the success of blogs like Copenhagen Cycle Chic - which has become a global talking point simply by posting lots of photos of nicely dressed Copenhagen people riding bicycles – fashionistas would like you to regard bicycles as a kind of mobile catwalk. You’re on display to the world, girls, so you really need to think about what you’re wearing.

Mikael Colville-Andersen, the writer and photographer who started Copenhagen Cycle Chic, is as uncomfortable with this as I am, and expressed his worry in a recent blog: ‘Riding a bicycle is - and always has been - a rather simple thing,’ he wrote. ‘All you need is… a bicycle. You have a closet filled with clothes, don’t you? If you’re walking about town, you’ll wear them. You have clothes for hot weather and clothes for cold weather. Whatever clothes you wear as a pedestrian are suitable for riding a bicycle. You KNOW this. You were young once. You did it then. So now that I’ve started a ‘movement’ [which is admittedly much better than a ‘trend’] I’ve seen a sharp increase in the number of companies intent on selling ‘cycling clothes’ for urban, everyday cyclists. Whenever a trend or a movement appears, there will always be people keen to make some money off of it. Such is a market economy. Fair enough. It seems ridiculous, however, when people attempt to overcomplicate a simple thing. If you fancy riding sports bicycles for long distances in your spare time, or you like racing bicycles, you will require ‘gear’. I know this. I respect this. If you want to ride a bicycle to work or the supermarket over short distances, you do not need ‘gear’. Just open your closet.’

And yet the idea that cyclists – particularly women cyclists – need the right clothes and accessories in order to feel at ease on a bicycle seems to be taking hold. It’s the central assumption of the Scotsman article – an article about which Laura has now become a little ambivalent, particularly after she read Mikael Colville-Andersen’s blog.

‘There’s a two-wheeled revolution going on in the world of fashion,’ the article tells us. ‘It’s a million miles away from activity clothes and sweat rings. Not only are bikes a greener, cleaner way to get around, for a growing number of people they’re the ultimate style statement.’ This sentence is immediately followed by a quote from Laura, implying that Laura is endorsing what has just been said – even though, if you read the text closely, nothing Laura says throughout the entire article suggests that she regards her bicycle as anything other than a practical way of getting around town.

This is, of course, how our consumer culture works. Voracious in the way it exploits your insecurities and anxieties, it constantly tells you that everything you do in your life is a statement that expresses your identity. Then it persuades you that you need to buy lots of new things to help you do that. You want to ride a bicycle? You need chic cycle clothes.

Perhaps the reason why all of this bothers me is that I’d hoped bicycles, surely, were immune to all this foolishness. ‘Cycling is really not very cool at all in this country,’ observes Kirstin Innes, correctly, in her List article. No it isn’t, and thank God for that. A bicycle is not a symbol of status or wealth, or coolness, or sexual prowess, and nor should it be. It’s a very simple piece of design whose only purpose in life is to get you from A to B.

There is a curious statement later in the same List article. ‘Over in mainland Europe, they think very differently. In cities such as Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Madrid, cycling comes almost as naturally to the inhabitants as walking.’ Why, for crying out loud, should there be anywhere in the world where cycling isn’t as natural as walking? What is wrong with everybody, particularly at a time when there is simply no ignoring how much damage constant car use is doing to the environment?

But maybe this is the choice we face. 1. We live in a country where cycling is ‘uncool’, so the cycling lanes are generally hopeless, cars constantly and dangerously cut you off, and you are frowned upon if you don’t wear a helmet (I pointedly don’t wear a helmet, as a protest against the cultural assumption implicit in helmet-wearing, that cyclists are expected to fear for their lives every time they venture out – we are not motorcyclists, we are not going to injure our heads unless you crash into us. What should happen, rather, is that the responsibility is the car owners’, to drive more respectfully and not injure us). Or 2. we live in a country where cycling is ‘cool’, and there are much more of us, but we end up worrying if we’ll be sneered at in public if we’re not wearing the right kind of scarf.

I would like to think that, in a sane world, there can be a middle way. I’ll leave you with some inspirational words from Mikael Colville-Andersen. ‘Let’s sell bicycles and bicycle culture. Let’s make our cities nice places to live. But if someone wants to sell you ‘cycling clothing’ for riding to work or the supermarket, get the hell away from them in a hurry.  It’s these people I refer to when I travel around giving lectures about marketing the bicycle to the sub-conscious environmentalists. Marketing good. Silly marketing bad. In short: Men and Women of the Cycle Chic Movement! Reject the ridiculous marketing antics of would-be profiteers eager to sell you products you simply don’t need. You already have established your style. Merely transfer it to the bicycle. Ride on.’

Share 

<< Back to main