February 25, 2013Bicycles

THINGS YOU WOULD NEVER EXPECT US TO SAY #01

It’s funny how trends work. Unless you are an uber-fashionista, who needs not the slightest sniff of styling semaphore to be ahead of the curve, the vast majority of us lesser style gurus need a trend to be around for some time before we can even consider embracing it. Take ‘bootleg jeans’. Shockingly flared and ridiculously long compared to their precursors, they quickly came to symbolise all that was right about a pair of trousers… suddenly one had legs that were fifteen inches longer and thighs that thought they were calves and to consider wearing anything else would have been laughable. But whoOOAAHHH! The circumferentially-challenged ‘skinny’ jean stealthily crept into the denim vernacular and into our wardrobes and all of a sudden, just HOW ridiculous did any other jeans style seem? And thus it is with the fickle and frivolous world of fashion.

One trend that is huge right now and is making us smile wryly in a big way at the moment is the all-pervading trend for fluoro. The high street has become a veritable strip-joint of Hi-vis, neon, acid (oh ok.. no one says that anymore. Showing my age… how embarrassing.). Call it what you will, but look how anyone and everyone in the, eeek, dare we say it, ‘cycle chic’ cycling world is laughing on the other side of our faces right now. We’ve all sneered at fluoro in recent years, in the same way that we’ve snootily turned our noses up at lycra, bottle cages and time trials… fluoro simply made the wrong statements about the kind of dignified, genteel cycling that we wanted to do in our ‘everyday’ clothes. Can you imagine what a hi-viz vest would look like over a vintage tea dress and platform sandals? Purrrrrleeeeaaase! Like a red rag to a bull a high-viz vest worn by a cyclist was literally screaming out “I’m a vulnerable ignoramus, naively peddling along this road that belongs to you, O Great Vehicle Driver, so why don’t you please ingratiate yourself to come and knock me off!”. As inflammatory a subject as The Great Helmet Debate, fluoro divided communities, created cycling tribes and caused Marmite-style polarised reactions. Indeed, sceptics would say that wearing purpose-designed fluoro not only encourages the idea that cycling is inherently unsafe, putting off would-be new riders but also potentially places the blame with the rider rather than encouraging drivers to be more vigilant.

But are we now on the brink of a high-viz fluorolution? The SS13 catwalks were full of the stuff, and once you start looking, it seems the world around us is too. We went for our usual Sunday morning family cycle ride yesterday along the Seine (where , I hasten to add, they in the process of doing a huge amount of regeneration work to turn the verges into a car-free, pedestrian and cycling (segregated, I gleefully add!) utopia) and it felt like an all-out affront of the garish stuff. Maybe I’m just super-sensitive to it being in the ether at the moment.

But whether it conjures up dim and distant memories of mid 80s Kajagoogoo, wiry marathon runners pounding the streets or just evokes the die-hard commuter brigade on folding bicycles, Fluoro is so hot right now, it’s sizzling. Superlatives abound. Zesty, vibrant, punchy, acid, zingy. And if a little bit of reflective fluoro helps us be seen in the dark out there on the mean streets, hallelujah! Fashion has come to its senses, and a perfect harmony of stye and functionality prevails. Our mantra for all things cycling precisely.

So, in a ‘Things You Would Never Expect Us to Say…” type post, here’s our round-up of the very zingiest fluoro cycling products out there right now. And what a treat they look with our BEG collection of bicycles and accessories…

Effervescent Fluorescent – We Love You!