Raleigh Topshopper

Topshop’s in on the act. Cycling’s cool – with petrol at £1.25 a litre it’s better for today’s fashion-conscious woman to give up her car than stop buying clothes. In fact Topshop are keen for you to buy more clothes because no self respecting lady is going to get on a bike wearing what Evans has to offer.

Their website’s got a little video showing girls in short skirts weaving around London’s backstreets riding Pashley bikes. For visitors to their website, Topshop offers some routes for young women in short skirts and hotpants.

As ever – more people cycling is a good thing. I find it interesting and slightly disappointing when big business and retailers latch onto cycling as the “next big thing” for their own ends.

Style over sense

I know it's not new news, but I saw the Chanel bike again on a post that linked to an article in the Telegraph. So Chanel bring out a bike for £6900. This is the same money as you could by two eye-wateringly expensive Condor Diamantes with Campag Record and still have some change for an energy drink - or whatever Diamante owners go for. Alternatively you could buy 12 Bromptons and have change for a whole wardrobe of dayglo jackets - or whatever Brompton owners go for.

I notice that like all highly exclusive (read expensive) products, the Chanel bike is a limited edition. Limited presumably because the manufacturers have to stop work every half an hour with giggling fits over the fact nobody noticed the extra zero they added to the end of the retail price. This is essentially a nicely spec'd £500 roadster with a fancy paint job and two girls handbags attached to the rear rack. Most of the population of Copenhagen ride something similar for 10% of the price tag.

I just don't get why when a fashion house conducts a branding exercise, whatever was the lucky recipient becomes fashionable. Fine if it's Timothy Everest smartening up M&S's suits - they both know something about the rag trade. Or Linda Barker desperately attempting to take the chav out of dfs sofa range (has anyone ever paid full price for one of their sofas?) But Chanel and cycling just don't seem good bedfellows.

Pedal it like Beckham

I learnt the other day that professional football players aren’t allowed ride bikes – apparently it’s in their contracts. Nor are they allowed to go skiing. Footballers are valuable resources and like any company asset need to be maintained in good working order to deliver a full return on investment. Skiing is clearly tough on the knees and the risk of injury is high, not only to legs. I read that broken thumbs were a common snowboarding injury.

But cycling?

Is it because they are worried about damaging their precious limbs through pedalling or because they perceive that they may get knocked off and hurt? Given that getting caught speeding whilst over the safe alcohol limit is a rite of passage for most footballer it can’t be the latter.

What can be the harm in cycling to get a paper from the local corner shop …hang on there’s the issue. That one phrase sums up the whole problem: why would a footballer want to ride a bike to the corner shop when he can take a Bentley Continental GT?

1. footballers don’t live in places that have corner shops

2. footballers certainly wouldn’t collect their papers, they’d get them delivered or more likely

3. their agent would tell them all the bits they needed to know.

It’s a shame though as cycling is often prescribed as an entry point to taking up exercise or a part of a programme of recuperation.

The biggest shame is that children, so heavily influenced by celebrity sportsmen, particularly footballers, never see them riding a bike. At some point in a child’s life they will have had the conversation that runs

Child - “but I don’t want to [delete as appropriate] got to bed now/eat broccoli/dry my hair/do my homework”
Parent – “well [delete as appropriate] David Beckham/Frank Lampard/Wayne Rooney does”

The problem is that argument doesn’t work with “I’m not driving you to school everyday, why don’t you ride your bike?” since David Beckham/Frank Lampard/Wayne Rooney don’t ride bikes.

To get children cycling, it’s got to be cool yet accessible, not in a skinny jeans wearing, fixed gear, fakenger, cutting edge Hoxtonite kind of way.

Complete the set: astronaut, deep sea diver...

…bike messenger comes next in the list of uninsurable, yet now apparently “cool” professions. So you’re a 25-35 year old metrosexual looking for the next hip thing to sink your disposable income into – well it’s fixed gear cycling. And it’s official, two barometers of what’s up and coming have informed me of this. BBC 2’s Culture Show and trend forecasters (yes such organisations do exist) Future Laboratory both say that cycling’s officially cool.

The Culture Show had a 10-minute piece on alley cat races and followed some footage of a group messengers on a cycling-cider drinking-camping weekender. The theme was one of family, fraternity and f&#k it I like riding bikes. They’d have done it regardless of the Beeb’s camera crew.

Future Laboratory by contrast tells people who used think they were cool what kids (usually) are about to think is cool so that the un-cool people can make money from them. If Future Laboratories say that something’s going to be cool, then sometime, somewhere for someone it will – like palmists however some of the details can be a little vague.

Future Laboratories demographic profiling ranges from the sensible to the sublime: “Generation Jones”, “Rolodex Teens” and my personal favourite “Muffragettes” describing the rebirth of feminism – apparently. According to the blurb, fixed gear bikes are now “the defining fashion accessory for a new tribe of young urbanites” – you wouldn’t hear Madame Zola, your local palm reader utter that phrase.

But wait a minute, do we want cycling to be cool? Surely just making it normal would be better. Anything that gets people on bikes is a good thing, but sustained change comes from desire not diktat. Cool implies it’s fashionable and today’s achingly cool must have is tomorrow’s charity shop staple.

In fashion loose-waisted, generously cut practical dungarees are always going to lose out to skinny, low-rise denim. Because you’ve got to be thin enough to wear it; it’s exclusive. So it’s an obvious extension that fixed gears would become cool over a sensible bike, one with brakes, say.

The fashion industry’s already nibbling at the world of two wheels sleazily pimping it to help it sell more overpriced clothes under the banner of “eco-awareness” and this "all the kids are riding pencil thin retro steel frames with spoke cards" stuff doesn't help.