Like all disciplines of sports, Road Cycling has it’s own sense of fashion. Fads and crazes come and go, you only have to look back at the 90’s to see how much has changed in the sport. Or has it?
To be fair, the fashion has certainly improved in the last few years, with pioneering brands such as Rapha, Vulpine and Cadence making quality stuff for the less dorky types. We’ve seen a shift in the whole industry leaning toward a much more refined and elegant aesthetic to that of the years gone by.
Cycling around London and Surrey, you’ll soon notice that at least half of the riders you pass on a Sunday morning will be wearing Rapha. Last week around Richmond Park 90% of the riders I passed were adorning the signature arm band that’s now synonymous with Rapha. Don’t get me wrong, this is no bad thing. It’s great to the sport crawl out of the fashion cave that it’s been lurking in for over a decade, cycling is cool again, and cool people need to cool clothing to wear…
As with any fashion culture, you’ll get people that want to be different. They want to stand out, they want to show everyone else that they’re unique. They want to say a massive ‘fuck you’ to the stereotypical dorky view of Road Cycling. How does one go about achieving this? I’m talking of course, about the retina-burning flouro.
2013 is the year of Neon. Companies from Bont, Giro and Fi’zik have all got their fingers in the neon pie. Perhaps the first company that brought us the must-have neon accessory was DeFeet, bright yellow oversocks and gloves slowly but surely gained popularity last year. It didn’t take long for others to catch up. You can now quite easily kit your bike out in headache-inducing amount of bright colours.
So what’s next? With the recent popularity boom cycling is currently seeing; we think the use of flouro is here to stay. Whether that’s for functional ‘hi-vis’ or just trendy fashion, companies will be wanting to give the consumer as much choice as possible. Why not?