イギリス発のバイシクルブランド「RAPHA」が、この夏ニューヨークにポップアップ・ストア「Cycle Club」http://www.rapha.cc/cycle-club/ をオープンしていましたが、９月末をもって閉店となりました。そのセンスの高さから、ファッションとバイクの融合を感じさせてくれた素敵なお店でした。ビギナーな私にとってモチベーションを上げてくれるショップでもあったので終わってしまったのは残念。そんな事を考えていた矢先、目に留まったのがこちらの記事「Runway to Roadway」。
この取材では、オフィスからそのまま出て来たような装いのミニスカートや、10センチはあるヒールでも自転車に乗っている少数派のスタイリッシュなバイカーを取り上げています。彼女たちにとっては、ヒールでコツコツ歩くよりもバイクで走った方が足も痛くないし、靴の底も減らないで助かるとか。一理ありますよね。
その一方、個人的に気になっているのが、スポーツとしてバイクに乗っている人たちの着こなし。ハドソン川沿いや公園のトラックを走る男女が、まるでツール・ド・フランスの選手のようにウェアを着こなしています。日本では、女性が全身をこのウェアで固めている方が珍しいかもしれません。
“メッセンジャー・ヘルメット”はこの取材ではもう“ダサイ”という事になりますが、私の「GIRO」だって色々研究して買った一品なのです！つまり、スポーティに乗りたい時は「GIRO」にして、もうひとつ普段着用に帽子型のヘルメットを揃えるのが今どきのオシャレさんということになるのでしょうか。この記事に掲載されている帽子（Yakkay, http://www.yakkay.com/）がまた可愛くて♡買ってしまいそうです。
ちなみにNYはヘルメットの着用は義務付けられていませんが、隣りのNJでは義務付けられていますので、遠出する時には着用して行くのがベターだと思います。
The Photo from New York TIMES Bicycle Chic Gains Speed
By RUTH LA FERLA
TALK about making an entrance. Intent on arriving at a recent gala in style, Topaz Page-Green swooshed onto the scene on her trusty vintage roadster. She wore, of all things, a scarlet dress with a slinky 1920s feel. “It was to the ankles,” she recalled. “I had to hoist it up.”
Heads turned. But she takes such stray looks, and the occasional whistle, in her stride. “I’ve definitely noticed glances,” she said, “but I pay no attention.”
Ms. Page-Green, who runs a nonprofit group that provides meals to needy children, likes to charge around town on her bike. Sometimes she’s done up in sparkly necklaces and towering heels; other times she coasts to appointments, sans helmet, in a blazer and fresh-pressed jeans. “I get sweaty a little, but it doesn’t bother me,” she said. Her bike, after all, is a stylish appendage, “a kind of rustic enhancement,” she said.
She is one in an increasingly visible band of chic New Yorkers whooshing along the green-painted bike lanes that have proliferated in Manhattan, from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Hudson and from TriBeCa to Harlem, clutching BlackBerrys and clad not in spandex but in fluttery skirts, capes and kitten heels.
Roadways are the new runways for these style-obsessed cyclists, their bikes no mere conveyance but a racy adjunct to their look. More than a few are infusing what used to be an athletic, or purely practical, pursuit with eye-catching glamour and sex appeal. Their style, a modish amalgam of fashion and function, is documented on blogs and emulated by like-minded sisters on wheels. Their enthusiasm is fueling an uptick in business among independent merchants.
Women, mostly young, have given the image of cyclists “an extreme makeover,” said George Bliss, who owns Hudson Urban Bikes on Charles Street in the West Village. His store caters to upscale New Yorkers whose aim it is to speed around town on a traditional Schwinn or three-speed Raleigh while sacrificing neither their decorum nor élan. They are a far cry “from the image of the adult cyclist as infantry solider with a helmet,” Mr. Bliss said, referring mostly to the athletes and messengers who whiz by in that all-too-familiar forward-thrust posture that has, he said, “alienated every pedestrian.”
“The idea now is to look like a pedestrian on wheels,” he added firmly.
Mr. Bliss said that his clients tend to be women who almost invariably dress to impress. “They are my best customers,” he said. “They want more things — fenders and baskets and chains and bells and things to carry their kids and their dogs.” And most are turning their backs on the once-customary aerodynamic helmets and latex shorts in favor of a look as fetching as it is genteel.
In a city that elevates the pursuit of chic to stratospheric heights, voguish cyclists on vintage bikes are “part of a movement,” said Julie Hirschfeld, the owner of Adeline Adeline, a boutique in TriBeCa that sells bicycles, jaunty vintage-style wicker baskets and canvas bags. Their look, captured on Web sites like The Sartorialist and Bicycle Catwalk, as well as Cycle Chic from Copenhagen, is part of “that whole sort of blog style,” Ms. Hirschfeld said, one that is studied and much copied on Manhattan’s streets.
A desire to look workday glamorous impelled Michelle Tillou, an art dealer, to ride to her gallery on Beekman Place the other day wearing a blazer, elasticized trousers and patent-leather wedge-heel shoes. More often she slips on kitten heels. “The better to hook onto the pedals,” she said.
For the designer Lela Rose, wedge-heeled platforms and a khaki shirtdress of her own design are ideal for racing on her custom tricycle from the Union Square Greenmarket, where she picked up a bundle of mint, to her Seventh Avenue atelier.
Ms. Rose and her cycling cohorts began appearing in Manhattan in significant numbers a couple of years ago, influenced perhaps by a handful of early adopters, including local celebrities like Chloë Sevigny and Naomi Watts, who aimed to burn calories, not fossil fuels. Their example inspired Ms. Page-Green. “When I ride my bike, I’m not wasting rubber,” she said. “I’m not spewing exhaust fumes. And I actually keep myself fit.”
Not everyone is thrilled. Ross Autry, a blogger in Birmingham, Ala., noted in an e-mail that multitasking bicyclists are too self-consciously hip for his taste and, what’s worse, may pose a hazard. “Fixing your makeup or sending a text message could have catastrophic results,” he said. To say nothing of going without a helmet.
Ms. Page-Green, who likes to speed around on the sidewalk, has encountered hostility. “When you’re going too fast, people get mad at you,” she said. “I’ve had canes waved at me in the distance.”
Such complaints, though, go largely unnoted in an increasingly bike-friendly city. Last year, the city completed 200 miles of bike lanes in all five boroughs, contributing to an increase in the number of daily city cyclists to an estimated 201,000, up 79 percent from 2008, according to Transportation Alternatives, a bicycle advocacy organization.
A report by the Department of Planning indicates that the number of adult female cyclists in the city is growing faster than that of men. The male-to-female ratio has dropped yearly since 2003. Some of these women seem to view their bikes, equipped with high-end saddle bags and bells, as a stand-in for a car — in their way, as efficient and status-laden. “My bike is like a Suburban, but that’s the Texan in me talking,” said Ms. Rose, who moved to New York from Dallas and can be spied any day of the week pedaling uptown from her home in TriBeCa, her children and Stitch, her terrier, in tow in a seating compartment that is attached to the tricycle.
“A bike in New York City is sort of what a convertible is in Los Angeles,” said Bonnie Morrison, a fashion publicist who gave up her fancy mountain bikes years ago, preferring to scoot around the city on a boy’s Raleigh Chopper from the ’70s. Its low-riding banana seat, ultrawide handlebars and nonfunctioning speedometer are part of its charm, Ms. Morrison said.
So, too, is its off-kilter cool. Ms. Morrison once planned an outfit to complement her little chopper: a chambray shirt flat sandals and a patterned ’50s-inspired Prada skirt. “I saw myself as this very chic, carefree Parisian on a moped with an Hermès bag and the wind in my hair,” she said.
The reality, however, was sobering. It turned out that her skirt was too snug for propriety. “Besides,” she said, “at times, when I see my reflection in a shop window, I think, Oh my God, I look like a 35-year-old on a child’s bike.” It’s an image that, she said, “I just have to put out of my mind.”
On a blustery morning last week in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Lee Dares, a model newly arrived from Toronto, wore a girlishly bibbed sweater, a navy blazer, Ann Demeulemeester roughrider boots and vintage Gucci sunglasses, her look accessorized with a borrowed Schwinn Le Tour. Ms. Dares has her heart set on a Raleigh single-speed, once she settles in. “I know, that’s so hipster,” she said sheepishly, “but everyone in Brooklyn rides one.”
Heads turned. But she takes such stray looks, and the occasional whistle, in her stride. “I’ve definitely noticed glances,” she said, “but I pay no attention.”
Ms. Page-Green, who runs a nonprofit group that provides meals to needy children, likes to charge around town on her bike. Sometimes she’s done up in sparkly necklaces and towering heels; other times she coasts to appointments, sans helmet, in a blazer and fresh-pressed jeans. “I get sweaty a little, but it doesn’t bother me,” she said. Her bike, after all, is a stylish appendage, “a kind of rustic enhancement,” she said.
She is one in an increasingly visible band of chic New Yorkers whooshing along the green-painted bike lanes that have proliferated in Manhattan, from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Hudson and from TriBeCa to Harlem, clutching BlackBerrys and clad not in spandex but in fluttery skirts, capes and kitten heels.
Roadways are the new runways for these style-obsessed cyclists, their bikes no mere conveyance but a racy adjunct to their look. More than a few are infusing what used to be an athletic, or purely practical, pursuit with eye-catching glamour and sex appeal. Their style, a modish amalgam of fashion and function, is documented on blogs and emulated by like-minded sisters on wheels. Their enthusiasm is fueling an uptick in business among independent merchants.
Women, mostly young, have given the image of cyclists “an extreme makeover,” said George Bliss, who owns Hudson Urban Bikes on Charles Street in the West Village. His store caters to upscale New Yorkers whose aim it is to speed around town on a traditional Schwinn or three-speed Raleigh while sacrificing neither their decorum nor élan. They are a far cry “from the image of the adult cyclist as infantry solider with a helmet,” Mr. Bliss said, referring mostly to the athletes and messengers who whiz by in that all-too-familiar forward-thrust posture that has, he said, “alienated every pedestrian.”
“The idea now is to look like a pedestrian on wheels,” he added firmly.
Mr. Bliss said that his clients tend to be women who almost invariably dress to impress. “They are my best customers,” he said. “They want more things — fenders and baskets and chains and bells and things to carry their kids and their dogs.” And most are turning their backs on the once-customary aerodynamic helmets and latex shorts in favor of a look as fetching as it is genteel.
In a city that elevates the pursuit of chic to stratospheric heights, voguish cyclists on vintage bikes are “part of a movement,” said Julie Hirschfeld, the owner of Adeline Adeline, a boutique in TriBeCa that sells bicycles, jaunty vintage-style wicker baskets and canvas bags. Their look, captured on Web sites like The Sartorialist and Bicycle Catwalk, as well as Cycle Chic from Copenhagen, is part of “that whole sort of blog style,” Ms. Hirschfeld said, one that is studied and much copied on Manhattan’s streets.
A desire to look workday glamorous impelled Michelle Tillou, an art dealer, to ride to her gallery on Beekman Place the other day wearing a blazer, elasticized trousers and patent-leather wedge-heel shoes. More often she slips on kitten heels. “The better to hook onto the pedals,” she said.
For the designer Lela Rose, wedge-heeled platforms and a khaki shirtdress of her own design are ideal for racing on her custom tricycle from the Union Square Greenmarket, where she picked up a bundle of mint, to her Seventh Avenue atelier.
Ms. Rose and her cycling cohorts began appearing in Manhattan in significant numbers a couple of years ago, influenced perhaps by a handful of early adopters, including local celebrities like Chloë Sevigny and Naomi Watts, who aimed to burn calories, not fossil fuels. Their example inspired Ms. Page-Green. “When I ride my bike, I’m not wasting rubber,” she said. “I’m not spewing exhaust fumes. And I actually keep myself fit.”
Not everyone is thrilled. Ross Autry, a blogger in Birmingham, Ala., noted in an e-mail that multitasking bicyclists are too self-consciously hip for his taste and, what’s worse, may pose a hazard. “Fixing your makeup or sending a text message could have catastrophic results,” he said. To say nothing of going without a helmet.
Ms. Page-Green, who likes to speed around on the sidewalk, has encountered hostility. “When you’re going too fast, people get mad at you,” she said. “I’ve had canes waved at me in the distance.”
Such complaints, though, go largely unnoted in an increasingly bike-friendly city. Last year, the city completed 200 miles of bike lanes in all five boroughs, contributing to an increase in the number of daily city cyclists to an estimated 201,000, up 79 percent from 2008, according to Transportation Alternatives, a bicycle advocacy organization.
A report by the Department of Planning indicates that the number of adult female cyclists in the city is growing faster than that of men. The male-to-female ratio has dropped yearly since 2003. Some of these women seem to view their bikes, equipped with high-end saddle bags and bells, as a stand-in for a car — in their way, as efficient and status-laden. “My bike is like a Suburban, but that’s the Texan in me talking,” said Ms. Rose, who moved to New York from Dallas and can be spied any day of the week pedaling uptown from her home in TriBeCa, her children and Stitch, her terrier, in tow in a seating compartment that is attached to the tricycle.
“A bike in New York City is sort of what a convertible is in Los Angeles,” said Bonnie Morrison, a fashion publicist who gave up her fancy mountain bikes years ago, preferring to scoot around the city on a boy’s Raleigh Chopper from the ’70s. Its low-riding banana seat, ultrawide handlebars and nonfunctioning speedometer are part of its charm, Ms. Morrison said.
So, too, is its off-kilter cool. Ms. Morrison once planned an outfit to complement her little chopper: a chambray shirt flat sandals and a patterned ’50s-inspired Prada skirt. “I saw myself as this very chic, carefree Parisian on a moped with an Hermès bag and the wind in my hair,” she said.
The reality, however, was sobering. It turned out that her skirt was too snug for propriety. “Besides,” she said, “at times, when I see my reflection in a shop window, I think, Oh my God, I look like a 35-year-old on a child’s bike.” It’s an image that, she said, “I just have to put out of my mind.”
On a blustery morning last week in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Lee Dares, a model newly arrived from Toronto, wore a girlishly bibbed sweater, a navy blazer, Ann Demeulemeester roughrider boots and vintage Gucci sunglasses, her look accessorized with a borrowed Schwinn Le Tour. Ms. Dares has her heart set on a Raleigh single-speed, once she settles in. “I know, that’s so hipster,” she said sheepishly, “but everyone in Brooklyn rides one.”
