Recently in Fashion Category

The big headline is Rapha for Women at last!

Obviously my first response is to make a list of the things I want.

The lightweight jersey in light blue would be nice if I'm doing the Etape this year (of course this means the moment I get one it'll be hellish weather).

It's got something of a classic Bianchi team jersey vibe going on and not being white gives it a bit more usability in my book.

I need a new gilet and I'm quite tempted by the new white one. Although I do really like the contrast stripe of the old one which feels a little bolder than the piping.

The full preview shows plenty of things that I WANT and expansion in the range that look interesting.

The city riding stuff is nice enough but doesn't turn my cranks. Perhaps I'm a bit binary about having bike mode and town mode. I like what they're doing but it doesn't grab me for riding around town. That said the pocket t-shirt may turn out to be an opportune purchase at some point.

Would love to hear what you guys think of the new stuff. Any standout items, any duffers?

On the women's stuff, I'd really love to hear what women who cycle think of it. Grit & Glimmer have got a first look with an American perspective I guess, but what about women cycling in the UK?

For me the three items are the core of any good cycling collection and the decision to go with normal shorts, not bibs is well thought out given the likely audience and type of event they'll be riding.

Opening entries are from Team Radioshack and Omega Pharma Lotto.

Hitting it hard for the first batter up to the plate (baseball metaphor? WTF?) "The Shack" are putting it into the bleachers with this number.

Where to begin?

• The arbitrary nipple high divide making it look like a boobtube
• The stuck in the 90s grey-on-grey patterning last seen looking pointless on the USPS kit
• The use of grey in cycling kit

Note: Rich Land on twitter says "Grey along with denim should never be seen anywhere near cycling kit. I bet the podium cap is a Stetson"

Exception on the grey rule is the ACBB kit for historical reasons.

Meanwhile Omega-Pharma Lotto (isn't that an american college fraternity/sorority?) seem to have tried to press home the finer details of melding the "brand imaging" of a national lottery to that of a pharmaceutical giant and driven their designer to despair.

End result is that poor Pip and the gang are going to spent the whole of next season being labelled Colgate by the rest of the peloton. It's either that or Aquafresh.

I suppose you could excuse it by saying it resembled pharmaceutical packaging, but that's like saying you prefer stubbing your toe to poking yourself in the eye.

And the worst thing about this all? There's a whole load more of them to come :((((((( *cries*

Garmin Transitions: you just know that somewhere someone is thinking to themselves "You know we really should think about how we can represent the transitions thing with a gradient fade." With light blue, orange and argyle checks.

Coco The Clown's outfit is pretty "visible", it doesn't make it cool either.

Columbia-HTC: After last year's spectacular win in the "winning races dressed up as lego" classification, can it actually get any worse? No chance that this year the Stapleton gang will be wearing something that makes them look less like cannon fodder in a badly conceived sci-fi series.

There's a reason that lots of people bought last season's Cervelo Test Team kit and it's that it actually paid some attention to being wearable. And it did it without losing brand identity.

So if you spot any new kit, let me know so I can see just who is going to be the worst dressed team in the peloton next season.

Sunglasses are one of those things that go in trend waves in cycling. More often than not it's Oakley who are responsible for it with their saturation marketing of the pro peloton.

The Oakley Radar, which became widespread in 2007, has become near ubiqitous at every level of the sport so they have to come up with something else to keep the punters coming back. Even I've got a pair now and I really like them. Certainly an improvement on what I was wearing before in terms of comfort and coverage.

Which is where the Jawbone comes in. Prototypes were worn by Thor Hushovd and George Hincapie last season and this season Lance Armstrong and Mark Cavendish have become the highest profile wearers of the production models.

Currently Cav is wearing the white ones at the Giro and although they aren't available in shops yet, you can buy them from Amazon.co.uk

He wore the silver ones to win Milan-San Remo which they don't seem to have. There's also a Livestrong version which Lance has been wearing and which are obviously going to get plenty of airtime this year

So if you want to get ahead of the trend curve, now is the time to start purchasing. And if anyone at Oakley UK is reading and would like to send me some to test, then I am easily contacted at alex at atomicecho dot com.

There's every indication that 2009 could be a boom year for the stylish cyclist. And, praise be, it's not going to be just lycra for weekend wannabes.

Last year we saw Topshop encouraging women to cycle in style something which has extended into the menswear side of things with Topman shoppers wanting the bikes in the windows.

Marcus Ross started the excellent project London Bike Style which shows just how much more there is to riding a bike well than the pricetag on your gear and the speed you go.Incidentally, he's looking for a male model to wear some Timothy Everest clobber for a shoot.

Interesting to note that Timothy Everest is doing something bike-specific as he's a designer with a good eye for making good clothing affordable, most notably in his work for Marks & Spencer's Autograph range. I don't think he's going to be the last tailor to make a move into this area. Richard James has already developed a relationship with Condor for a very exclusive singlespeed.

Even Chanel do a bike these days, so it's no surprise that Celine are doing a collection called "Bicyclette", described as "couture sportswear" and very much in the Parisian cycling tradition of modern, relaxed and fun.

they've illustrated the press release with some lovely sketches by Garance Doré which are really quite sexy and cool.

The item in the range that I most like was the shoes which had a certain old-fashioned charm about them.

Speaking of cycling and style, I wholeheartedly agree with Bikesnob NYC's views in his interview with Belgium Knee Warmers:

"Helmets have pretty much killed style in road cycling anyway. Not that I have anything against helmets, mind you, but let's be honest. Cycling looked better before helmets."

From a purely aesthetic point of view, he's absolutely on the money.

In case you were wondering why I haven't mentioned my own cycling activity thus far, it's because there hasn't been much. I'm coming down with a cold again after taking a break to enjoy the Canadian Rockies over Christmas and New Year. I'll get started again once I'm better, hopefully this weekend.

Traditionally it's the High Street that follows on from Designer when it comes to setting light to a trend and watching it spread across the field of fashion. So it's quite heartening to see a reversal of this trend when it comes to women and cycling.

Earlier this summer I wrote that a big shift was happening for cycling when Topshop picked up on cycling as a summer trend. Now The Daily Mail has followed on, albeit a season late, explaining

Why cycling has finally gone from geek to chic

It picks up from a Vogue article which referenced London Cycle Chic as a destination for this season's cycling trends.

Topshop was ahead of Vogue and the Daily Mail is running favourable articles about cycling. I'd rate that as a good thing for cycling, wouldn't you?