Girls Friday: Kate Upton for Sports Illustrated

Rapha to produce 2013 Team Sky kit

They've come a long way in a few years and it is testament to the quality of their gear that Rapha is going to be producing the Team Sky cycling kit from 2013.

The four-year deal, announced this morning will include the design and production of Team Sky racing kit, as well as off-the-bike outfits for riders and staff. So they will now look good at the press conferences as well.

“We are delighted that, after only eight years as a business, we have been chosen by Team Sky, the world’s number one team, as their partner. We share their passion for performance and team ethic and are enthusiastic to inspire and engage a wider fan base around the globe,” said Simon Mottram, Founder and Chief Executive of Rapha.

Like Rapha and its influence on road cycling in general, Team Sky has turned the world of pro-cycling on its head. Established in 2009 it has achieved consistent honours and this year with a team featuring the biggest UK names including Edvald Bosan Hagen and Mark Cavendish, carried Bradley Wiggins to his first Tour de France victory.

Dave Brailsford, Team Principal of Sky Pro Cycling, said: “Team Sky has achieved this year’s level of success because of a strong and steady vision to find improvement at every level to help our riders win. I see Rapha joining us next year as another step in that direction. They share our ambition and vision for cycling.”

Rapha will release the Sky Pro Cycling kit in January 2013 via www.rapha.cc and at select cycling retailers.

Colnago C59 disc: one day

I'll have some of this

Girls Friday: Miranda Kerr neked

Kansi bikes: It's all about the fold

It has been hard to find a folding bike that doesn't look like it should be worn by someone in a dayglo jacket and comfortable sandals, such is the stigma that they have earned themselves over the years. 

But as cycling has become a more acceptable form of transport so the imagination of the manufacturers has been fired, and we end up with this, the first folding BMX. 

Whether it would stand up in a head-to-head with the vintage Eighties Skyways to which it gives a nod has yet to be discovered. Regardless of that, this has to be the best-looking bike to have been unfolded thus far. 

Kansi bikes aren't just about the looks, though. They have done away with all the frustration that would usually go with a folding bike and created something that goes from folded to ready-to-ride in six seconds and rides like a normal road bike. What's more, the company has made its bikes so safe that they have set a new kitemark. 

Folding bikes just got cool. Find out more at www.kansi.co.uk

Nigel Cabourn AW12: sturdy

You always know what you're going to get with Nigel Cabourn - good solid gear that draws from eras past, manufactured with a passion that is unsurpassed. You might not want to climb a mountain in it, but you could.

Girls Friday: Bar Rafaeli

Maxim's Hottest Woman in the World. Understandably.

Barbour Steve McQueen: limited

Nice pieces, fantastically shot, but ultimately only really wearable by those in the US, given the stars and stripes.
Available at End

To all who visit this blog

To all the faithful visitors to this blog, which now number many hundreds a day: I have set up another blog under my author name, Graham K Albert which is primarily to promote my book, White City. Posts will be in a similar, but less style related, vein and if you could find it in your hearts to follow that too, I would be incredibly thankful, because right now it is getting something like three hits a day and I feel like I might have more success if I tied my blog posts to a balloon and let it go.

So maybe you could spare a minute to visit  http://gkalbert.blogspot.co.uk/ and then if you like you might want to sample the book by following the link on the right side, or above, and then if you like it you could tell a friend about it, and they could tell someone and they would tell someone else and before you know it you've had a hand in creating this juggernaut of a novel as it snowballs its way through the literary world, pummelling the shit out of 50 Shades of Grey with one of its own double-ended dildos and then I will win the lottery tonight. Stranger things have happened. Not to me. 

What I'm saying is word of mouth can make this happen (not a lottery win, that's just stupid).

Obviously if you're one of those three visitors, then let me be the first to thank you. 

I have also set up a Facebook page - Facebook.com/grahamkalbert, which you  can 'like' if you ... er ... like. 

Girls Friday: Tattoo fabulous

Barbour: A jacket for life

I remember when I bought a Navy Barbour Beaufort jacket back in the eighties. I couldn't get a green one because my mate had that colour. It was during my casuals football hooligan phase and I used to wear it with a pair of brown jumbo cords and an Aquascutum scarf and I used to think I was some sort of cross between a hardnut and a country squire.

After a while it was replaced by something else, probably by Stone Island, and it was left in the cupboard in the spare room at my Mum and Dad's. Shortly after that it was drafted in to service by my Dad who wore it to work on building sites. I found it a few years later in the cupboard he kept his work stuff in, battered, ripped, faded by brickdust. It looked wonderful.

Why I didn't reclaim it then I will never know because they moved shortly after and because by then my Dad had retired he chucked it out with everything else that he no longer needed. He never really did register the significance of Barbour and the 'jacket for life' ethos.

If I still had that jacket I would have sent it back and had it refurbished, just like the coats in this video.

Hindsight. It's a wonderful thing.

I'll just have to get myself one of the new Wood Wood collab Bedales instead (below).

Via Unabashedly Prep

Barbour x Wood Wood tenth Anniversary jacket

I can't say I have paid much attention to either Barbour or Woodwood. It's all nice solid stuff but there's always been something else. However this collaboration to mark the tenth anniversary of Wood Wood is a bit special, and certainly warrants more than a cursory glance. 

Available here from the end of September.

Aston Martin 1:1 scale model kit

Here we have every young model maker's dream - a full size replica of the Aston Martin DBR1 that carried Carroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori to victory in the 1959 Le Mans race, made into a giant Airfix-type model kit, with the bits on a parts tree.

But there was no Humbrol model enamel used here - the seats are genuine leather upholstered, the tyres genuine Dunlop and the gear knob and lever are machined alluminium.

It was made by Aston Martin replica makers the Evanta Motor Company and  this is the only one in existence. It it will be auctioned at the Goodwood Revival weekend.