Editor’s Note: Ahead of Vogue World: Paris, a celebration of the intersection of fashion history and athletics, we have edited and expanded this 2013 story.
As summer shifts into high gear and fashionable New Yorkers are putting foot to pedal—courtesy of the ubiquitous Citi Bike and the hipster Bamboo Bike Studio, we take a look at some of the many bicycles that have pedaled their way through the pages of Vogue.
Riders’ feet could finally touch the ground when big-wheeled, high-seated Penny Farthings gave way to “safety” bikes in the 1880s. The popularization of the pneumatic (inflatable) tire by a Scottish veterinarian during the “Gay Nineties” meant that the golden age of cycling coincided neatly with the debut of Vogue, in 1892.
Once the metal-wheeled “boneshaker” models were a thing of the past, things really got rolling—the biggest bump in the road being the debate around what was and was not appropriate women’s attire. Vogue endorsed the sport from the start, dedicating column inches and covers to the well-dressed women on wheels. “Conservative people can no longer maintain that nobody who is anybody will ride a bicycle when on Bellevue Avenue at Newport, the smartest women are to be seen on wheels every day,” the magazine informed its readers in 1894. They continue to appear in Vogue—look for them on the streets of Paris as part of Vogue World as well.