Icons of Chic

Some people are impressively iconic by nature and can inspire us all. Above: Red Mini with matching head phones. Below: The essence of cool!




White, silver and gold flowing freely.



Larger than life full contrast!



The Easy Life.



Happy Cycling!

Birds Eye Distortion

As Distortion hits the streets of Vesterbro, Cycle Chic gets airborne.

Distortion 2011

Stacked fixies can mean only one thing: Copenhagen Distortion is upon us. Every year this 5 day street party draws massive crowds of hipsters and hangarounds for a celebration of Copenhagen Life.


100.000 people in the street makes cycling difficult for a change, but of cause the cycling girl is still here, as a flash of movement through the crowd.

Protecting a National Treasure

The Cycling Girl has been a cultural icon for over a century. All over the planet, but most strikingly in Denmark. We raise monuments to The Cycling Girl, plate them in gold and, as above, we protect them as best we can. With safe, separated bicycle infrastructure, of course, but sometimes with some extra effort... :-)

The Bicycle Girl - 1897

113 years ago, a newspaper article appeared in the Milwaukee Journal about The Bicycle Girl. It was August 14, 1897. An article singing the praises of The Bicycle Girl. All over the world at this time similar articles were being written about the great numbers of women taking "to the wheel". It was an exciting and alluring development, sure, but it was also something that caused great - and positive - societal change.

One of our readers, Cream, sent us the text. It appeared on the Milwaukee Bicycle Collective.

Read the article for yourself. History is repeating itself. After forty years of the bicycle being branded as a largely male-dominated sport or recreation, we're returning to an age where the bicycle was an accepted, respected and equal transport form for Citizen Cyclists of both sexes. These are interesting and exciting times. Just as they were in 1897.

The Bicycle Girl in Milwaukee

"The Milwaukee bicycle girl is all right. She is of all sorts, all sizes, all ages, and all good looking. Sometimes she is very handsome. Bright, vivacious, interesting, wide-awake, and generally “up to snuff.” The Milwaukee bicycle girl is something Milwaukee is proud of.

Sometimes she uses the wheel as an accessory to show off a handsome costume; generally she uses it to get about town. Mostly she loves to ride and knows how. And she is not scarce. You can find her anywhere and everywhere. She rides to business in the morning. She rides home again in the evening. She does much of her hopping a-wheel. She takes long trips to the park and into the country. Of course she likes an escort, but if she doesn’t find one handy, why she can go it alone and do it up brown. She is to be seen at all hours of the day—and night, too, for the matter of that. She rides a good deal at night. When she has no male escort for a night ride she gets a female escort. That is the rule. There are exceptions, of course, but you can’t go by exceptions.

Ting-a-ling-ling! My, how she whizzes by! Nothing meek about her. She knows the rules of the road, knows what her rights are and knowing, dares maintain them. She is not bold or immodest. Far from it. It is not known that she is given much to flirting. She does look a bit roguish and—well, wicked isn’t just the word but it’s the only one in the language—yes, a little bit wicked at times. Graceful! Of course she is graceful. She rarely humps herself over her handle bars. She doesn’t look well that way and she knows it.

She mostly has a very graceful and easy seat and carries herself a-wheel with the air of one knowing all about it. She rarely gets flustrated. Down Wisconsin street, through the narrow and often crowded funnel of a thoroughfare over the bridge, she sails along up Grand avenue, barely missing the hubs of passing vehicles, but she does miss them and it is not often she dismounts to make the passage.

Out in the parks where the road is freer she can get up a good bit of speed. She likes it, too, and her eyes sparkle with pure delight and her face flushes to rosy color with the healthful exertion. And even little accidents are a rare thing.

Her costume? Well, she is diversified in that respect. Generally it is the short skirt and high boots, with a natty hat. Sometimes she breaks through the conventionalities and wears a costume that no man would dare attempt to describe, but that all men turn and look at. But not often. Her modesty is a safeguard. She never dons anything immodest. But in the matter of costume she is as varied in her moods and choice as an April sky. Watch her from any prominent street corner almost any time of day—as there is little doubt you have already done it there is any poetry in your soul. Here she comes in brown—a soft chocolate brown— hat, skirt, waist, shoes and all. Even her hair and eyes are brown. Pretty? Certainly and as trim and neat and clean cut as—what sort of comparison can one make? None.

Then she rolls by in a gray suit. It is hard to tell which one prefers. She is charming in both. And here she is in a blue. And that seems to be about right also. It’s hard to choose. And this next one. A natty shirt waist and black skirt, and the trim figure goes by with the glint of the wheels in the sunlight and nothing is fairer.

The bicycle girl is not a dozen years old yet, and she is one of the great institutions of the country. How she has forged to the front! Take her off the streets and out of the parks and an element that gives much of the color and life we love to see would be gone. And would it not make a difference in color of her cheek and the brightness of her eye? Has she not found health and a better physical and mental development, as well as pleasures she never dreamed of before she rode the wheel? God bless the bicycle girl."


Danish cartoon from 1899, originally entitled Wheelwoman, which indicates that it came from the US or UK. The caption reads: "The Holy Antonius' Last and Greatest Temptation". :-)

Mads Berg's Iconic Cycling Girl Illustrations

Copenhagen 10, 2010

It's official. Mads Berg now ranks as Cycle Chic's favourite Danish illustrator. We love pretty much everything he does, but we go just a little bit weaker at the knees when we regard his timeless illustrations of that iconic cultural figure - The Cycling Girl. She's as old as the bicycle itself and yet Mads Berg succeeds in reinventing her and adding new layers to the long history of Cycling Girl graphic design. And that's saying something, considering the wealth of material over the past century.

The illustration above is classic Copenhagen and features another icon - the Christiania cargo bike.

Bornholm 10, 2010. Poster/cover illustration for the island of Bornholm.
Here's an illustration for tourism on the Danish island of Bornholm - the Sunshine Island.

A38 Dairies/Arla, campaign illustrations, 2007
We've blogged about this illustration before here on Cycle Chic. A campaign for a yoghurt.

Illustration for packaging on KIMs crisps, 2003.
This is an illustration for some crisps from 2003.


Our new affection for Mads Berg doesn't mean we're giving up on one of the masters of Danish graphic design, Hans Bendix. His post-war posters are still iconic and relevant today. These two examples are tourism posters from the late 1940's.

Check out Mads Berg's website. It's a treasure trove of graphic design. And here's a link to his online shop.

Thanks to Eneko for the link.

This Day in Cycle Chic History

Oh lazy day. Still trying to come to terms with Life After Summer Holidays. So here's a This Day in Cycle Chic History post. What bicycle related photos did I take on this day in previous years?

11 August 2007

The calendar function on Flickr is quite cool. You can see what photos you took on any day since you started on the website.

Double up near the old Stock Exchange.

11 August 2008

I was productive on this day in 2008, apparently. The iconic blue bike lanes of Copenhagen, as seen from above.

One of the two Weather Girls high atop the Richs Building overlooking Hans Christian Andersen's Boulevard and the City Hall Square. They acted as a weather barometer from the mid 1930's until 1995, when the machine broke. If rain was forecast the woman with an umbrella and a dog would rotate out to hover over the city. If the weather was fair, the Cycling Girl rotated out. Here's an earlier post about them.

Some chopper action.


Boulevard Moments.

Aerial chaps.

Morning transport.

Cycle Chic - Now with Cheese!

An advert from Portugal - filmed in the Azores - featuring a classic cycling girl selling... um... cheese! Why not?

Thanks to André for the link.

Historical Cycle Chic

This is a cartoon from 1899 featuring The Cycling Girl that had [still has - just look at this blog] such a massive impact on society. The text reads:

"The Holy Antonius' Last and Greatest Temptation". A cycling girl offering him a ride on a new-fangled tandem bicycle. The man was sold.


Vintage Danish Tuborg beer advert featuring, yet again, the iconic cycling girl.
"A Tuborg tastes lovely on a bicycle ride!"

This latter advert features in a new exhibition at the Copenhagen City Museum called Copenhagen by Bike. All about the history of the bicycle in Copenhagen. I was involved in the exhibition and have a number of photos in it. You can read more about it here on Copenhagenize.com, including how to get there if you're in Copenhagen. It runs until June 2010.

We Are Red, We Are White, We Are Danish Dynamite

The title is the text in a football song from the 1980's which still lives on. Red and white being the colours of the Danish flag - the oldest national flag in the world, actually. Legend will have it that it fell from the sky during the Battle of Lyndanisse where the Danes were battling the Estonians. King Valdemar II the Victorious grasped the flag and showed it to the troops, giving them renewed vigour to continue, and win, the battle.

One wonders what would have happened if a gust blew the flag over to the Estonians. Or what if the flag was just a fancy kite some kid was flying nearby and the string broke. Whatever. Here's another Cycle Chic version of red and white. No less poetic but it's much more fact than fiction.

Two Danish icons. The cycling girl and the bicycle pictogram.

Cycle Chic Stamp

There's little doubt that we take the Cycling Girl seriously as a Danish icon. Here's a Danish stamp from 1975 celebrating the launch of the United Nations' Decade for Women. 1975 was also the International Woman's Year. See... it's not just us.

Thanks to Lefa, who blogged about the stamp here, with more info about the Decade for Women.


And here's my favourite statue in Copenhagen. The Cycling Girl high about the city.

The Cycling Girl of the Day

Last week I went for a bicyle ride with a few hundred cyclists here in Copenhagen on the last etape of the COP15 Cycling Tour of Japan hosted by the Danish Embassy in Tokyo.

There was one clear winner of the prestigious Cycle Chic Cycling Girl of the Day award.

Jeanett is a singer and she produces albums on which she sings jazzed up versions of old Danish lullabys. She was present in Japan on the Cycling Tour and, of course, she was riding along with us in Copenhagen. In true Copenhagen style.

Jeanett travels extensively with her Lullawear project, not least to Japan, and you can check it out right here. It's great for kids.

Czech This Out

A Czech advert for Podebradka, a brand of flavoured mineral water. Featuring that timeless icon - a cycling girl.

April Streeter, a blogger/writer for Treehugger and a good friend of ours has this fine post about the Six Reasons The World Needs More Girls on Bikes.

The number of adverts featuring bicycles is growing and growing. Here's one from my latest copy of Arena for bespoke brand New & Lingwood:

Nothing to do with bicycles, just some well-dressed chappies on them. Having fun, too.

Then there's this advert for Killah, as seen on a shop window near me.


And the cover of a Japanese bicycle magazine is true Cycle Chic, too.

Style Over Speed Advert

Style over speed in best Copenhagen Cycle Chic style in this bottled water advert from... Poland, I believe.

It's classic Cycle Chic also in a historical perspective. From the very invention of the bicycle, women featured prominently in adverts for bike brands. Often gliding elegantly past exhausted men or men with punctures. It's bicycle advertising for dummies, with 120 years behind it. It's what we need more of instead of silly terminology and silly profiteering and overcomplicating a simple issue.

Here's a link to the tag The Cycling Girl - A Cultural Icon where we have a number of posts about that most Danish of icons - Cykelpigen or Cycling Girl.

Statuesque

If the city of Copenhagen ever gets around to erecting a statue in tribute of 'the cycling girl', it should look like this.


A fantastic statue celebrating the strong, proud history of bicycle culture can be found in Västerås, Sweden where 33% of the population ride each day.


We have a statue of the Danish 'cycling girl' in Copenhagen. Read more about her here. But I want to see one smack in the middle of city hall square.

Oh, and if my mate Lars gets to post shots of sunsets, gulls and water, then I do, too... :-)

Couple of Things

This couple, complete with a kid at the front of the chap's bike, were ready for green.


It's been a while since we've had a little "It's Not Just Us" post - wherein we show that The Cycling Girl - Cykelpigen - is still an integral and iconic part of Danish culture after over a century. Here's a cover of a book called Pregnancy and Exercise and what better photo on the cover than a pregant woman on a bicycle.

Red Lights, Lego, Amsterdam, Media Blitz

How to Wait at a Red Light. No hurry.

As ever, we checked in with Marc at Amsterdamize.com to see what the Danes with the different language are doing. Love this shot.


The original Legoland amusement park is celebrating 40 years this year. A perfect opportunity to repost this shot. Cycle Chic is everywhere in the Danish nation. Even at Legoland. The cycling girl is such an iconic figure in Danish history that she is present in town and city settings all over the park.


I'm quite taken with this photograph in the Danish Politiken newspaper of yours truly. Great stuff. The photographer Tobias is quite brilliant. It's been a hectic fortnight for Copenhagen Cycle Chic and copenhagenize.com.

For some strange reason that now escapes me, I ended up on a page on the Cannondale website - a bike brand, apparently. No wonder we don't see many around here. It's a FAQ about choosing the right bike, including such pearls of useless text as:

"Because we are obsessed as you are about your bike's weight, we implore you to go visit your local Cannondale Dealer to help you determine the specific weight of any bike you may be considering. We know you'll be impressed."

"Individual fitting of a bicycle is a step-wise process and a series of compromises. Professional guidance DOES simplify the process and we encourage you to be fit properly by a trained bicycle professional."

"Your body type is the only factor that does not change. Your inseam to height ratio, the length of your arms, the size of hands, the size of your torso etc. all factor into determining the correct fit of a bike."

"As a result, Cannondale highly suggests that you not rely on fit charts, but instead seek professional guidance and recommendations from an experienced bicycle shop."

"Buying a Cannondale is an investment in your recreational pleasure. Fitting a Cannondale should be like fitting a wedding gown, or an expensive suit. It should fit the individual as well as either of these other fine items."

If I'm going to use a bike for competitive racing, this might make sense. But otherwise it's merely an excerise in Terminology Folly as we posted about previously. If you think about it, there are either hundreds of millions of really stupid people who dare to buy their bikes without 'fittings' involving 'measuring hands' or there is a handful of really silly bike websites. My money is on the latter. [Ironically the word 'latter' means laughter in Danish.]