Attaquer’s New Cycling Kit
This Australian range of bike gear will turn heads for the right reasons
Road-cycling kits used to be eye-catching for all the wrong reasons: badly designed, strewn with oddly-matched logos or just ill-fitting. The response, in the 2000s, was a return to the simple, classic aesthetic of the sport in its early years. Well-cut monochrome became the norm, and that, in turn, eventually sparked its own backlash. Jerseys and socks especially became eye-catching once more, but this time for the right reasons. At the forefront is the Sydney brand, Attaquer, co-founded by Greg Hamer and Stevan Musulin five years ago.
“Not everyone is going to like it, but that’s kind of been our mantra from the beginning,” Hamer tells us. That attitude, whether it’s obliquely using animal print or a nautical motif as inspiration, has spawned many imitators in Australia and beyond, but Attaquer is still doing its best, as visible in its latest limited edition season, “Hall of Fame.” The starting point this time is iconic sporting moments and stars.
“We wanted to try something a bit different with this range. We knew it was going to get some of the more gentlemanly cyclists noses out of joint, but we’re OK with that. Not every range can be shot with the European Alps as the backdrop, searching for that next magical vista,” Hamer says. “We went low budget with dodgy Photoshops and 10-15 second Insta stories to take people back to these pivotal sporting moments in our lives that everyone remembers—no matter what part of the globe you’re from. Like Agassi, Schumacher, Ewing, and ‘our’ Sydney Olympics.”
Rather than tapping the national kits of the athletes, the brand used the original normcore outfits sported by the volunteers at the 2000 games as inspiration. An homage to Italian football giants Juventus is more easily recognizable, as are the echoes of Marlboro’s Formula 1 sponsorship in another design, but the kit bearing the distinct testcard graphics of TV action-replays pops the most.
“For us, what we’ve done with this range sums up what Attaquer is all about,” Hamer explains. “We’re not afraid to try things a little bit different and because of the designs we’ve produced and the niche we’ve created in the market over the past five years we believe we have the creative freedom to do so.”
Launching today, Attaquer’s “Season 11: Hall of Fame” is available online.
