Will it ever be cool to wear team kit?
It’s January, which means we’re riding again after a couple well-earned weeks off the bike. For you, wherever you’re reading this, hopefully you’ve had the same. Spring racing feels not so far away all the sudden. Time to get serious. We’ve been filling the hours with back episodes of Life in the Peloton, on Elite’s Quick Motion rollers and plotting Spring editorial on HNH. Go time.
A number of pithy press releases have also come across the desk in Jan. Among them, news from apparel juggernaut, Rapha, about the company’s EF-sponsored team kit, updated for 2020 and now available on their site.
They are flashy. They are loud. They are a little bit 90’s. The question remains: will you break the “rules” and wear it? “My theory is that it is a result of kits being used as a tool to satisfy multiple sponsors and stake holders within the team, it ends up leaving a lot of kits looking like corporate manuals repurposed as kit – designs that don’t take the average fans’ taste into account,” says Angelo Trofa, who designed the EF and Canyon//SRAM kits for Rapha on why historically team kits aren’t worn.
Flashback time: it’s 2010 and I am standing in the French alps. Armstrong is riding his last Tour. I am wearing a long sleeve FDJ jersey bought in Bourg-d'Oisans. I am cheering. Happy, even. I do not know better. It feels awesome.
Who wears pro team kit? Only posers and real pros, right? Cycling Tips nailed the sentiment that’s become cycling gospel in a 2019 post; while largely (somewhat?) true - who honestly wears Sky blue? - it is also slightly ridiculous.
"Our intentions with the EF Pro Cycling kit for 2020 was an evolution of the 2019 design, injecting a new angle whilst telling the same story,” explained Angelo Trofa, product designer. “We wanted to create something which went in hand with the aim of the team: To disrupt the pro peloton. Design references were pulled from late ‘80s and early ‘90s surf and skate apparel.”
Team kit isn’t worn because it isn’t earned. It’s really that simple. And from a fan POV, with sponsors, team names and riders changing all the time, team kit becomes a moment in time just as fast. (That Skil Shimano jersey might be vintage; looked at another way, just an open invitation for unwanted aspersions.)
HNH staffers aren’t pros, but we sure AF aspire to dress like them. Shaved legs, socks up high and an emulation of style that is such a massive part of cycling’s heritage. That’s the rub with the EF/Rapha kit: it’s still Rapha. Still awesome. Same everything. Yet that hesitancy remains.
If there’s one brand that will break the pro team kit “rule,” this is the one. While I don’t expect the road around me to be littered with bright pink, mullets and moustaches anytime soon, I do expect many will dawn the EF kit precisely because it’s as unique as several of the personalities they have riding for them.