Bike Riding in a Dress 101

In the recent comment section of this post, Good Girl Gone Blog asked:

How does one ride a bike in a dress?

I've wondered that myself. You've mentioned the whole dress wearing while biking thing before and I've wondered about gusts of wind and exposed undercarriages. Do you carry modesty clips so your dress won't fly up? Or do you wear shorts underneath? Or do you just throw caution to the wind and give your town a show? Fill us in!

Number 15 on the list of Ways to Know You Have Bicycle Culture: Your entire wardrobe can be classified as ”cycle wear”. Especially those stilettos from Christian Louboutin or your new double-breasted trenchcoast from Tiger of Sweden.

I ride my bike in dresses. I ride my bike for a night out on the town. I've even ridden my bicycle to job interviews, wearing a full suit, nylons, and a pair of heels.

It's not quite as impressive as it sounds. Once you decide to do it, everything just sort of falls into place.

Most of the time the dresses I wear are knee length, which makes biking in them rather simple; any shorter and passersby might get a peek of my panties, any longer and the skirt has a tendency to get tangled in the spokes. I resolve these two issues by wearing leggings under shorter dresses and by holding the hem of longer dresses in my non-steering hand or by strategically folding and tucking just right. I'd recommend starting with knee-length, a-line types and graduating into fitted pencil skirts after some practice.

The hardest part of biking in a dress is actually getting on to the bicycle. The best way to do this, particularly if the dress is more form-fitting than flowing, is to put the bike in the street and stand on the curb. Just a few inches can make a huge difference. Then hop on and start pedaling.

And, you know, pretty panties are always the way to go, but on days that you are bicycling in a dress, a conservative boyshort is probably your best bet.

If you are serious about riding in a dress, Keeping it Awkward has some practical advice including the angle at which your knees should be. There's also a Diva's Guide to Biking. This is some serious business.

I swear, if I had been so in love with bicycling on the day I got married, I would have pedaled in my wedding dress, like these lovelies: