David Byrne: Plain Clothes Cycling

“We live in the city of dreams, We drive on the highway of fire.”

A MetaFilter post on David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries, starts a community discussion on what to wear on the bike for work.

“When I wore a backpack with my work shoes and purse, I ended up with a huge sweaty patch on my back.”

“Do male cyclists whose jobs require suits and ties wear said outfit while biking … or do they don their business suits over a sweaty body.”

and so on. What to wear on the bike, plain-clothes cycling, is a current topic and one we’re discussing with our partners. Cycling lacks technical commuter wear. By that I mean, gear you can wear on the bike and right into a meeting in the office. Outlier has some high-end Merlino tailored gear and Slate shows us his bespoke Rapha suit in this video.

Folding into Fall For the time being, most of us are piecing together outfits. In Vegas during Interbike, I wore Arc’Teryx Palisades Croppers with a thin, padded short underneath.

Back home in the cooler Seattle weather, I’m wearing wool and manpris (aka shants and knickers)

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In Germany, Kasmeneo is not wearing pants. Neither of those ensembles would pass in a business meeting (unless it’s a bike meeting).

Between those two looks, there has to be more stuff like these shoes from Two n Fro with suits to match.

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While few of us can pull of a Gary Fisher, there’s a balance designers can find.

Byrne is speaking tonight in Seattle at Town Hall with urban-focused speakers. I’m expecting the more lofty, big bike ideas and probably less talk about “showers at work,” but it’s a start. In that city of dreams, a nice to have is plain clothes for cycling.

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