Spotlight: PEdALED’s Technical Cycling Wardrobe

Black and white. Ying and Yang. Italian and Japanese. Cycling and lifestyle. Hideto Suzuki and Luca Bertoncello. PEdALED is a brand with two souls. Born out of the Japanese designer Hideto Suzuki’s desire to wear stylish but cycling-appropriated clothing, PEdALED has spent years trying to find the balance between technical sport details for life on the road and functional lifestyle products for those off-the-bike moments. But the brand is not suffering an identity crisis. PEdALED knows that, even the keenest cyclist, will spend more time off as opposed to on a bike. Therefore the clothes are more focused on details that reveal themselves at the pleasure of the wearer: zips that hide reflexes or extra material that will give more room for movement, extra large hoods that cover bicycle helmets or longer jacket sleeves that go all the way down to your hands, even when stretched out on a bike – small details that makes life as a cyclist easier.

Like all the best performance brands, the PEdALED products are developed by the team themselves. “We cycle during the week as commuters and during the weekend we do road racing or we do play bike polo, so each garment has its own specific attitude. That’s how we develop the styles; every design choice we make is really based around a purpose, it’s not just about the aesthetic reason,” says Bertoncello. But PEdALED’s dual purpose concept is organic and part of the brand DNA, according to Bertoncello: “There are hidden functions in some design elements and it takes in both the riding line and the living line. You can see similar styles that run through both collections; the style is the same, the comfort is the same but we use different fabrics or different solutions in some part of the garments for a different approach to how you use the garment. So we develop it in a more technical fabric or in a lighter fabric, for performance and a warmer material, or a more natural material, for a more casual use.” As PEdALED open up a pop up shop in London, next door to the Brooks store in Covent Garden, we asked Bertoncello to explain a few of these crossover items…

“This is a packable jacket made out of a water-resistant material, and it comes with a pouch which you put in your backpack or bag. When it starts to rain, or get windy, you can easily put it on, but it’s also smart enough to wear at a meeting. It’s a light-weight nylon and cotton blend, so it’s soft to touch, and at the same time it has the performance of a technical shell. The same style comes in linen for summer and wool for winter. For summer we chose linen because it’s the fastest natural material to dry. Also, linen is wrinkle free, so again it has the same features of the technical one, just in a more casual style.”Adventure Jacket

“This jacket won an award at Eurobike last year. It’s linen bonded together with a three layer membrane. It’s incredibly light, has a natural touch on the outside but a really technical skin on the inside to help you to survive heavy rain. The same jacket comes in 100% cotton that you can wax to make waterproof or keep it natural to gain a lighter jacket for lifestyle or casual riding. So, again, one is part of the more technical line and one is more for the casual line.”

“We developed this one with different wools and cotton fabrics – it’s our first award-winning jacket, which won the gold award in 2012. We have one that comes is brown checked wool, that looks really trendy, and then we go into a more plain wool with a heavier composition, so it’s more suited to really cold weather. Then we have twill yarn cotton, bonded with three layer membrane, which makes it lighter. We believe that once you find a nice cut, a good style, a good design, you don’t really need to change it. You can improve it, or change the function by using different fabrics. You don’t really need to design something new every time.”

“It’s a wind proof jacket which is simple and packable – it actually goes into your back pocket. When it’s windy you take it out, and there are two kinds of sizes you can choose from; one is the more fitted size so that when you’re riding it doesn’t really move in the wind but then when you jump off the bike, and you may want to look more casual, you can open it and close it on the second zip to give you more space. This way we can really use the jacket for the entire year because in winter time when you have more stuff under your coats, you can use it anyway because you can use the jacket’s larger size but it’s not too stretchy.”

Born Again line

“It really fits our philosophy to re-use garments in a different way. So this, for example, is made with Brooks L’eroica jersey that we re-used in a different way as a patchwork on the back, and so aesthetically it looks like a one-of-a-kind jacket, but at the same time the material helps you dry fast, it’s more stretchy on the back so when you bend over the bike, you feel more comfortable. We have other garments where we use military fabrics or textiles from military tents from the Czech Republic army for example. For the aviator jacket we used parachute material that provides a function as a wind proof jacket on the front.”

PEdALED, London Pop-Up store, 38 Earlham Street, Covent Garden – More info HERE