I roamed around the Nalini booth at Interbike and saw a few clothing articles that I liked. Nalini had a bunch of new cycling casual clothes for 2008. The Pro 70 cap for summer 2008, in the photo, I am going to order for the shop. And it looked cool enough to ask the kind stranger, Jason from Utah, who was also visiting the booth with his friends, to model it for a photo.
A few of the major cycling clothing corps. are working toward making fashionable, lifestyle cycling-associated clothing lines. It is kind of like snowboarding company t-shirts and warm-up jackets for those who live in LA, and hate the cold. You can't really comfortably wear a non-insulated cotton warm-up jacket in the snow, but you can go clubbing in it. Yoga togs have made it from the floor mats into the board rooms. And the entire service industry wears golf shirts with corporate logos.
Cycling lifestyle clothing, for example, means you can buy a pastel-colored non-wicking fabric bike jersey that has a silver embroidered logo on it and three back pockets. If you wear it on a 40-mile mountain ride, your sweat will freeze on you, and you will curse. But after your training ride and shower, you could work the sporty look at dinner and a movie.
I'll keep my eyes open when I visit the local mall and AMC theatre and report on the health of cycling casual. It could be good, or it could go the way of weight-lifting casual. Remember those neon zebra-striped loose cotton warm-up pants that the weight lifters used to wear in the 1980s? When they stopped wearing them in the gym, where the guys looked kind of weird but strong, and started wearing them to dinner, where they just looked weird with bad hair?
Ask your close friends and think hard before deciding that you are stylin in something that successful athletes avoid wearing when they are not working.
Photos by Wheelgirl at Interbike in Vegas. (Thanks Jason for being a good sport and a great cap model.)
