Rapha 20 celebrates the model’s twentieth anniversary this autumn, returning to London’s Truman Brewery the place they launched again in 2004 for a Rapha20: Previous Ahead exhibition, pop-up store, and a number of particular occasions together with group rides. It appears arduous to consider that Rapha has been round for twenty years – we’ve solely been reporting on bike tech & rumors since 2008. However twenty years in the past, Rapha’s authentic merino mix Sportwool jersey set a brand new benchmark for rethinking highway driving attire. Their easy design aesthetic, forward-thinking technical designs, and deal with the little particulars, set off a renaissance of smarter high-performance biking equipment. And all of us nonetheless profit at this time from the spark of competitors they ignited within the early 2000s…
Rapha’s 20 years of “Efficiency, Progress & Panache”
It was 20 years in the past in the course of the 3 weeks of the Tour de France that Rapha debuted on the Truman Brewery with their Kings of Ache exhibit, specializing in a few of biking’s biggest champions and their willingness to endure for the fantastic thing about the game.
That set the stage for his or her easy monochromatic black Rapha Sportwool biking jersey with their trademark refined pink particulars. And naturally, the model’s “ex duris gloria” motto… glory by way of struggling. It was an enormous shift from – and a direct response to – the overly shiny euro-style plastic-feeling highway biking jerseys of the time, plastered with staff sponsor logos. Rapha proposed a greater means ahead, a less complicated biking equipment impressed by historical past, however remade in a contemporary means.
Rapha 20: Previous Ahead exhibition on the Truman Brewery in London, England
As a part of this yr’s London Design Competition from September 14-22, Rapha will once more take over the Truman Brewery for a “kinetic set up, housed in an ethereal world of archive product and imagery” paired with a stacked program of biking trade panel discussions talks, events, and group rides. It’s a celebration of twenty years of cutting-edge designs. And a glance again on the transformative ethos behind the corporate that has since expanded from leisure highway riders to the best stage {of professional} biking. After which expanded to soak up gravel biking and mountain biking too.
“Rapha’s progressive aesthetic, impressed by mid-century highway biking, futurism, vogue, and modernist typography, disrupted the established order and endlessly modified the biking trade. Since then, this rebellious strategy has seen Rapha worn by Tour de France winners and obtain accolades from all over the world. At the moment, the model has transcended the biking trade to develop into a world motion.”
So on September 14, 2024, Rapha 20 returns to the Truman Brewery to open Previous Ahead. It’s meant to be an exhibit that celebrates their designs and merchandise of the previous twenty years. But in addition to set the stage for his or her subsequent developments. Plus, Rapha say they may “discover how biking will proceed to vary lives, rework cities and be a radical pressure for social and environmental progress“.
Rapha’s full description of the exhibit:
RAPHA20: PAST FORWARD EXHIBITION – G4, Ely’s Yard, The Truman Brewery, London E1 6QR
Rapha has commissioned artistic duo Isabel + Helen to provide the centrepiece of the expertise, Rapha in Movement; an set up impressed by the previous and way forward for Rapha’s first merino-blend jersey. Guests will uncover a large-scale kinetic sculpture which brings to life the motion of biking, and incorporates nods to the product innovation and craftsmanship that has pushed the model from the start.
Rapha additionally enlisted prime branding company Made Thought to create the exhibition’s spatial and experiential design, and visible identification. As guests enter the house, they may embark on an emotive, summary journey by way of a choice of Rapha’s archive and definitive moments for the model.
Finishing the present is The Way forward for Biking Manifesto, a printed publication that units the stage for the following 20 years, and explores what the way forward for biking might maintain. Rapha has spoken to an alliance of contributors to provide a holistic tackle how the game and tradition of biking has modified over the previous 20 years and the way it might proceed to develop, with contributors together with Rapha’s founder Simon Mottram and new CEO Fran Millar, EF professional cyclists Lachlan Morton and Alison Jackson, AMANI’s Tsgabu Grmay and Transport to London’s Will Norman. All guests will be capable of take a replica of the manifesto away with them to learn in full.
Register prematurely
The ‘Previous Ahead’ exhibit is free with on-line registration (right here), from subsequent week in London on September 14. Learn extra later concerning the full program of accompanying occasions and how one can take part at: occasions.Rapha.cc. There are catered events nearly every day together with a e-book launch that includes a chat with Rapha founder Simon Mottram and Rapha’s new CEO, Fran Millar. As well as, a sustainable design dialogue, a brutalist structure tour, metropolis rides, and group rides on a few of Rapha’s favourite highway biking routes in and round London.
Pop-up store with customized Rapha20 equipment
Plus in fact, there might be a particular Rapha20 pop-up retailer on-site on the Truman Brewery. Rapha will supply restricted version Rapha20 design merchandise and a choice of Rapha’s newest prime merchandise. There will even be some “rarities” on supply that you simply gained’t discover wherever else. And a ‘Customisation Atelier’ the place you may customise these merchandise you buy from the pop-up store.
