Call the Fashion police!
From lairy Lycra to motocross hand-me-downs, bulging body armour to brightly-coloured enduro kit, we’ve seen all sorts of styles in 30 years of MBUK – some rad, some less so! Here’s what the cool cats have been wearing...
1980s
At the time of MBUK’s birth, it’s fair to say mountain bike fashion hadn’t quite found its feet, with most riders looking like they’d tumbled backwards through an aerobics class, via an ’80s music video shoot. We’re talking neon Lycra from head to toe, puddingbasin helmets covered in stretchy covers like a jockey’s, and Ski Sunday-esque sunnies. Trainers, walking boots or sandals on feet, it didn’t matter – riders wore whatever they could squeeze into their toe clips. These guys (and it was mostly guys) may have looked silly, but they had balls (as was painfully obvious through the skintight spandex) – we wouldn’t want to ride their suspension-less boneshakers at half the speeds they did back then!
1990s
If you liked riding up hills, you still very much embraced the tight Lycra in the ’90s. But for the rest of us, things began to change as the decade progressed. If you were a downhill-shredding, wheeliepulling rebel, then you went full Hacienda rave, with baggy cargo shorts and an even baggier fleece. A bunch-of-bananas helmets hid a floppy barnet or centre parting, and sporty-looking wraparound Oakleys completed the look. It’s pretty much what the yoof are wearing today – the ’90s are making a comeback!
2000s
Skate and moto style hit mountain biking in a big way in the Noughties. The downhillers looked like gladiators, with full plastic armour suits sticking out from beneath garish, logo-covered jerseys. If you rode clips it was in disco slippers, and flat pedals meant clumpy, waffle-soled Vans. Bikes got way burlier (and way heavier), with big triple-clamp forks and coil shocks encouraging all sort of cliff-hucking antics and teeters along sketchy wooden ladder bridges. Dirt jumping became a big thing and pisspot helmets were all the rage. Skulls, flames or plastering them with stickers made them even cooler. BMXers still thought we were kooks though, and wouldn’t let us ride their trails.
2010s
With our subtly colour-matched, nicely-fitting kit and shiny enduro bikes, we think we look the dog’s bollocks now, don’t we. But with bumbags around our waists, goggles under our open-face helmets and Tellytubbies-like protuberances so we can film our antics, are we really that cool? Things have all got a bit serious these days, too. Mountain biking seems to have become all about getting from A to B the fastest, geeking out over geometry and suspension settings, following training plans and early bedtimes. What happened to bumming it, getting boozed up and chucking yourself off homemade kickers with knees out, feet hanging off and no regard for personal safety or style?!