There is now far more choice for women in the clothes they choose to ride in. We investigate how times have changed.
Not so long ago, if you were a woman interested in cycling your kit choice would be limited. Times, thankfully, are changing...
The fit wasn’t great, the size range was limited, the colour palette tended to default to black, pink and purple and it just wasn’t as technical as the vast array of items available to male riders. Women’s cycling kit has a history of being somewhat less than impressive. This was the case even for the pros at the top of their game.
“When I first started racing, my cycling kits were very ill-fitting and un-aerodynamic,” agrees Canyon// SRAM pro-team rider Tiffany Cromwell. “At the highest level you’re looking for that ‘marginal gain’ to help get ahead of your competitors, and if your kit is lacking, that one or two per cent can mean the difference between the best or second place.”
Thankfully, cycling clothing brands are starting to take notice of the female cohort of cyclists. Driven by the growth in women’s cycling and increased support for – and coverage of – pro women’s-racing, there’s more kit and more brands than ever before. And these brands are spending money on research and development to ensure women have kit that’s technical and comfortable with the features they need to ride to their best of their abilities.
Stepping up
One brand that’s made a big contribution to women’s kit recently is Rapha. The British company boosted its race reputation as the kit sponsor of Team Sky (now INEOS), and is now producing clothing for the Canyon//SRAM team.
Sponsoring brands often work closely with pros to help with the development and refinement of the kit they make, so over the past few years Rapha has produced a woman’s version of its Shadow water resistant kit. It has just released versions of its race-level Souplesse shorts with a detachable strap and, most significantly, has unveiled a brand new chamois that has been developed and produced in-house and was three years in the making.
Maria Olsson, head of design at Rapha, says that the relationship with pro teams drives innovation within the brand and legitimises its products. “The aim is to provide next-level kit to enhance the riders’ experience leaving them to focus on doing their job, which also trickles down into our main range race categories.” So the pros get the kit they need to perform, but all female Rapha customers benefit.
It’s not just the pro-level products that get time and attention, Olsson is quick to point out. “We do a huge amount of testing with a variety of riders, conditions and capabilities for all of our products to ensure it all works across the board.”
Ask the pros
Scottish company Endura has a long-held reputation for producing women’s kit, and has stepped up the investment and support in the last five years in particular. The brand supports over 34 female athletes, including the Cervelo Bigla Women’s World Tour team.
“We find that women’s teams are so keen to collaborate with us,” comments Endura’s product director Pamela Barclay. “We’ll meet up and do fit sessions at training camps, we’ll talk through our products.”
Like Rapha, Endura has invested a lot in fit, comfort-break technology and chamois pad research, working with its sponsored athletes, ambassadors and the many women who work for the company.
“Comfort is one of the unsung pillars of a good product. If it’s not comfortable, you can’t perform, and you’re not going to get the most out of your body,” Barclay states. This extends to being able to relieve yourself quickly when riding, which is why the brand developed its unique drop-tail bib short design.
Fit is another area that, just like buying clothes on the high street, varies massively between brands. There’s no uniformity between a medium in one brand and another, and brands also tend to size to their main markets, which can be the Mediterranean or Asian areas, both of which tend to take smaller sizes.
“We’re a Northern European fit, rather than a Mediterranean fit,’ explains Barclay. “We like to think our products are sized accessibly. We avoid things like sausage leg grippers, we make our waistbands flatter with less bunching and we size up to an XXL.”
Changing to suit
IRIS, or I Ride In Style, is the perfect example of another trend in women’s cycling kit. It’s a company led by a female entrepreneur, designing and producing the kit she’d want to see on the market. The credentials of
“If it’s not comfortable, you can’t get the most out of your body” Pamela Barclay, Endura
“Women’s kit, as with women’s cycling, should never be an afterthought” Iris Slappendel, IRIS
this particular entrepreneur can’t be topped: Iris Slappendel, Dutch ex-pro, designer and vocal women’s cycling advocate. As a pro-racer, Slappendel agrees with Cromwell that the kit available for women is frequently lacking.
“I often modified my clothes, like putting a different chamois in my bibs, adding pockets for race radios, taking uncomfortable elastic out of bib shorts, for example. Comfort and fit of kit was by far the biggest annoyance.”
So, combined with her design skills and experience of riding and racing in kit from a huge range of brands, when she retired Slappendel decided to take a leap of faith and start up IRIS. “I wanted to make high-end technical, discerning kits. You need to design with equal consideration for performance and style. Women’s kit should never be an after-thought. In that sense there are some similarities with women’s cycling as a sport, which for many stakeholders is still an afterthought.”
Her range of products takes the shape of seasonal capsule collections designed to be mixed and matched. Bright jerseys, loud accessories, functional bib shorts – they all have distinctive looks, but are clearly developed with experience and technical knowledge. The fact that IRIS is a one-woman show is, in her opinion, a blessing, despite the work involved. “I make every design in a limited edition of 100 pieces, which makes them pretty exclusive - you aren’t going to see three other women on your ride in the same kit!”
Sitting comfortably?
Women are more complicated to design for than men because the female body shape simply has a lot more going on: more variety in terms of dimensions and size ranges. Women can be straight up and down, have a narrow waist, be pear shaped, apple shaped; have a big bust and narrow hips, be tall and curvy or short and straight.
When it comes to specific features, there are three elements that brands have been working on: the chamois, the bib straps and, crucially, how to make going to the loo less complicated.
When women sit in the saddle, they are resting on the soft tissue of the labia, vulva and clitoris. It’s hardly surprising to anyone that saddle comfort is one of the biggest single issues facing women in cycling and the chamois pad is a huge part of that equation. After all, the chamois provides the interface between these sensitive areas and the saddle itself.
Women’s specific chamois pads are designed to provide the right balance of support and padding to different areas of the undercarriage, with denser or thicker foam to support the sit bones and a thinner area towards the front.
No two people are the same, so what works for one woman may not necessarily work for another – though there do seem to be certain trends. Women with an extended labia often find pads with lots of designed-in creases can be uncomfortable, for example, as the skin in that area can catch in the creases and rub.
This is why innovation like Rapha’s new chamois is important, and it has produced a choice of chamois for different styles of riding. The Souplesse is firmer and designed for an aggressive race position, while the Core is designed more for comfort over long distances. Both have zones of different foam density and a smooth, crease-free upper.
The finished products needed a lot of research, testing and design expertise to be realised.
“It took over three years and was tested by more than 28 women over 15,000km in every condition possible,” explains Olsson. “I have not worked on any other project that has been as in-depth as this. It included a huge amount of research, pressure mapping, competitor testing, working with physiologists and chamois engineers. It is completely engineered to the female form.”
When it comes to chamois design, Rapha is leading the way, and it’s likely that more brands will follow suit in the near future.
Bib and tuck
‘What needs to be female specific about bib straps?’ you might well ask. Well, the answer is two-fold: firstly, how the straps interact with a woman’s breasts when riding. Secondly, how the straps work with ‘comfort break’ features.
There are many different types of strap. The usual one-strap over each shoulder. The halterneck, the Y-shaped strap with the solo strap at the back and the Y-shaped strap with the solo strap at the front. Some companies also use a type of integrated vest base layer rather than straps, as seen on Rapha Classic and Core bib shorts. Women who have a larger bust can find that the two-strap design can end up getting pushed to the side and falling down over the shoulders: intensely annoying when riding! Some bigger-busted women really like the vest style as it gives additional support.
The between-bust Y-shape can chafe, or sit awkwardly over a sports bra, and some women find the
“The chamois is completely engineered to the female form” Maria Olsson, Rapha
halterneck design can pull on the neck, while others rave about those designs. There are positives and negatives to each one, which again often comes down to personal preference and what suits your body shape; overall, having a much wider variety of choice shows that cycling clothing companies are starting to think about women’s comfort.
Give me a break
If a male rider needs to have a wee, all he needs to do is park the bike, face the wall and rummage around in his shorts. When a female rider needs the loo, it can involve finding a toilet or some good undergrowth, removing jacket, gloves and jersey and pulling down her bib tights. It’s awkward, time consuming and when the weather is bad, deeply unpleasant.
So it’s no wonder that brands who are serious about women’s performance and comfort have been working to develop various ways of making it easy for women to pee without getting semi-naked. There have been various solutions along the way, some less useful than others. A thankfully shortlived offering, was a zip that went underneath the chamois pad. Trust us, this is not a place you want to have a metal zip. Most brands have settled on either having a halterneck design or one with a Y-shaped strap with a catch or hook on a single rear strap.
Both of these designs allow you to pull the rear of the shorts down to relieve yourself without removing other clothing, but there are a few issues. The rear magnetic catch design can mean having to do the yoga pose Gomukhasana as you try to reach the lower part of the strap up to meet the upper part of the strap from above. Thankfully, most of these types of strap fastenings now use magnets to snap into place when you get close.
Endura has gone for something completely different. Its drop-tail design involves a zip that runs from hip to hip and up over the bum, which allows you to open a flap (the drop tail) to nip to the loo without any strange bodily contortions. Earlier designs have been continually revised so this feature now has a stretchy zip and reinforcement at the sides.
“It’s a fast, quick system”, comments Barclay. “There’s no interference with the product underneath and you’re not having to re-thread and re-clip down your jersey. It’s been ridden on the Silk Road, the World Tour and the feedback we’ve had has been phenomenal.” Many women rave about this solution, although if you’ve got a curvy bum you can feel it pulling across your skin when you’re riding. The only other warning here is to pull the zip out a little when closing it up as catching your skin in the zip is something to be avoided.
The future
Innovation is coming thick and fast now with women’s cycling kit. Research and development is constantly pushing things forward. Women’s kit with increasingly technical fabrics and features is being developed and an improvement in chamois design is definitely something we’re going to see more of. But what else?
“I truly believe that innovation should be led by the riders’ needs, whether they are male or female,” comments Olsson, “and we can never stop challenging the current and always keep pushing for better.”
Cromwell feels that one area that needs to be looked at is providing kit for a wider range of body shapes, not just the ‘traditional’ cyclist’s body.
“I think it can sometimes be hard for everyday women who come in all shapes and sizes to find kit that fits or that they feel comfortable in,” she comments. There is a trend for this in other areas of sports kit, with brands like Nike producing kit in a much greater range of sizes.”
Slappendel agrees. “I often speak to women who aren’t feeling comfortable, so there’s definitely room for improvement there!”
Cycling is for everyone. We all deserve to have kit that fits, helps us ride and makes us feel great.
The rear catch design can mean doing the yoga pose Gomukhasana as you reach behind