Bikeautiful Boys

Velomama simply adores these cycle chic fellas and the very discrete emphasis on bicycles...
Now whoever tells me cycling is not elegant, I have nothing more to say.





As seen on Paul Smith's official website...

Guest Photo Saturday

As always, thanks to everyone who sends guest photos in to Copenhagen Cycle Chic. It's wonderful to see images from around the world. We've had a bit of a backlog so we made a little montage du monde.

But first, above, a smashing image of Ottawa Cycle Chic, from Rachelle and her fiancé. Wonderful stuff!


The latest installment in the Copenhagen Cycle Chic Goes Global series. Nigel and his kids slapped a sticker on a lamppost near the Bishop's Palace in the City of Wells - England's smallest city. Thanks, Nigel!


A bevy of global cycle chic images, in one easy png file! Thanks to everyone!

And a bit of Eurofunkaliciousness from Milo in Vienna to wrap up the proceedings.

More History Repeating Itself

My Cycling Heritage - 2, originally uploaded by westfieldwanderer.

This wonderful photo was scanned in by a mate, WestfieldWanderer, from his family album. Anno 1947.

There are often articles in newspapers and magazines about how cycling is 'hot', cycling is 'trendy', cycling has finally become 'mainstream'.

Bollocks. Urban cycling in everday clothes is not a new phenomenon. At some point in the not so distant past members of your family - yes, you and you and you - rode their bikes each day.

Devoid of cycling gear and fancy equipment. Just good sturdy bikes and their regular clothes. Skirts and suits. To the shops. To work. To visit friends.

Daily cycling isn't 'mainstream' all of a sudden. It has been for more than a century. Perhaps it has faded out a bit in some countries, but it's not new.

Which makes it incredibly easy to merely start doing it again.

”In the late 19th century, large numbers of women were already using bicycles to get to work, women office workers and shop assistants wending their way each weekday morning from the suburbs to the town. They found the bicycle a convenient form of transport for distances up to, say, ten miles”.

Plucked from John Woodeforde's book ”The Story of the Bicycle”, 1970

And that was on machines that would seem monstrous to us now. Not to mention the fact that they were wearing frightfully heavy dresses. If they could do it on those bikes, in those clothes, there are little excuses for not cycling chic today.

Tweed, Not Speed

Once in awhile, shards of brilliance appear on the cycling radar.
Jack Thurston, from www.thebikeshow.net dropped us a line and brought our attention to a wonderful cycling club. Tweed.cc.

A British club that places style over speed and elegance over exertion. Not unlike the cyclists on the bike lanes in Copenhagen. Although Tweed.cc take it one spoke further. Here's what they say about their goals:

"For today's cyclist, skin tight lycra may promise a reduction in wind resistance but also in decorum. A reflective yellow vest guarantees high visibility, but who would wish to be seen in such a garment? Certainly not the members of the Tweed Cycling Club. The Club's wheelmen and ladymembers wish for a return to the honest virtues of lugged steel, dynamo lighting and canvas saddlebags."

"Why spend a king's ransom on the latest titanium confection when any weight advantage will be rendered irrelevant by a cheese-and-pickle sandwich and thermos of soup?"

Indeed. These cyclo-sartorialists speak our language. In a way they are the cycling version of the Slow Food movement. We wish them well on their slow-paced, 'let's-stop-for-a-shandy-and-a-ciggie-shall-we' journey through the cycling landscape.

Have a gander at their website.