If you are a genuine cycling fan you will probably spend the next few days glued to your TV/computer screen, following the Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy).
The bicycle race started in 1909 and this year the event is celebrating its centenary.
Even fashionistas who do not like cycling may know about this tour as the leader of the race wins and wears the distinctive “maglia rosa” (pink jersey; while green/mauve/white jerseys are worn by the leaders of the mountain climbing/sprinters'/young rider's competitions…as you see there’s an interesting colour coded combination here…). Pink is indeed the colour of the Gazzetta dello Sport, the Italian newspaper that launched the race 100 years ago.
Yesterday British Mark Cavendish won the first pink jersey at Venice's Lido and the race continued today up to Trieste and you can keep up to date with the news in English about the tour on the Gazzetta dello Sport site that offers articles both in Italian and English.
Now, the “cycling fashion” part of this post’s title might make you think I will rant in the rest of this piece about cycling shorts making a comeback into fashion, but, unfortunately, I was traumatised as a young girl by this horrendously scary trend and still have nightmares about it, so I’ll focus on menswear, starting from an old picture I found of Armando Cougnet, the administrative director of the Gazzetta dello Sport and organiser of the Giro d'Italia from 1909 until 1946. 
Cougnet is posing with his bicycle in this picture and wears a shirt with a rounded collar and tie, a jacket with four pockets, knickerbocker trousers, capped Oxford shoes and a Borsalino type hat. Cougnet perfectly manages in this picture to conjure up through his clothes and pose a rather casual elegance. Indeed, though his knickerbockers and bicycle make us think about sport and movement, his tie, jacket and hat, evoke a special sartorial quality.
The casual/sartorial dichotomy of this image makes me think about the “Sartorial Gymnast” theme behind designer Neil Barrett's S/S 09 menswear collection. Barrett used sporty jersey fabrics in this collection but gave them a new life employing them for formal and elegant classic pieces.
Though stylish, jackets feature multiple pockets and a relaxed silhouette in a fashion similar to Cougnet’s and rather than going for knickerbockers, Barrett opted for tailored shorts, and matched the clothes with black, grey, light brown or neon coloured brogues or bi-coloured capped Oxford shoes in which the laces were replaced by an elastic band. 
There is another image from the early history of the Giro d'Italia that I quite like, it’s the one portraying Giovanni Cuniolo posing on his bicycle in a photographer's studio.
In this image the cyclist is wearing a sort of vertical striped dynamic suit that makes me think about the diagonal black and white stripes or vertical grey and white stripes of the jackets, trousers and shirts from Patrik Ervell's S/S 09 collection. Inspired by the New International Style of Ettore Sottsass' Milanese furniture design collective, Memphis, the striped designs from this collection perfectly fuse sportswear and formalwear.
Cuniolo’s suit also calls to mind Robert Geller’s black and white stripes printed on jackets, a sort of prison uniform look that works at its best when matched with dark trousers.
And if you really want to pay homage to the legendary pink jersey but add a touch of luxury to it, well, you can opt for the opulence of Salvatore Ferragamo’s S/S 09 collection with those bright pink (verging towards the fuchsia nuance) trench coats and scarves. Enjoy the Giro d'Italia then!
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