Cycling Adverts – Saddles

This is one of a series of looks at advertising in cycling, mostly informed by looking back through past issues of Procycling magazine. The bicycle saddle inhabits a peculiar dichotomy of worlds - it is both the most important physical, and least important aesthetic, part of a bicycle. It is your primary contact point, yet...

Cycling Adverts – Tyres

This is one of a series of upcoming looks at advertising in cycling, mostly informed by looking back through past issues of Procycling magazine. We all love a good advert, don’t we? Those little snippets of language or imagery created with the sole intent to make us feel part of something, or to instil a...

Cycling Adverts – The Malliot Jaune

There is an argument that the most recognisable symbol of cycling is not, somehow, a bicycle, but a piece of clothing that when introduced was made of a colour that was traditionally associated with Judas Iscariot and had connotations of illness and duplicity, that has come to be the most coveted jersey a cyclist can wear. The history of the yellow jersey - the malliot jaune - is well documented elsewhere in terms of how it became such an iconic garment (I recommend Peter Cossins's "The Yellow Jersey" for it's brilliant mix of historic, symbolic and cultural research), so this is simply a look at how the famous golden fleece has been utilised for the purposes of capitalism - encouraging us to buy more stuff from the pages of ProCycling.