I have a very tight budget, so most things I buy (especially clothing) has to be multi-functional. I would love bike specific shorts and jerseys, but right now I can’t afford them. So I wear what I’m comfortable in.

I wear tight fitting Boxers Briefs (they are almost a spandex like material), with basketball or hiking shorts. You can find me wearing either type of shorts all summer long doing almost everything.
Up top I have a mixture of synthetic T’s and cotton T’s in both short and long sleeved.
I need to find some decent socks. I have cotton work socks which have worked great for me up until this year. I don’t know what changed, probably my age, but my feet are sweating way too much and the cotton socks just aren’t cutting it on or off the cycle.

Lastly, I do have a couple of cycle specific clothing articles. First is my helmet, and second are my gloves. Back when I used to ride motorcycles I found how great riding specific gloves felt on a long ride, and I have found the same to be true with bicycle specific gloves.

Now take this all with a grain of salt. I just barely started riding again after a 25 year hiatus from riding. My current bike is a Hybrid and my trips are under 30 miles so far. I’ll agree with a lot of other folks here who said, just get out and ride.

If you think a cycling jersey is expensive wait till you find out how expensive merino socks cost..

I'm not super price sensitive but wool isn't cheap no matter whether is sock, underware, or shirts.

This is a good point to raise. I do find that a lot of road cycling specific clothing is not multi-functional at all. The cut of road cycling jerseys for example is terrible for everyday use when you are not sat on a bike. Road bib shorts are also totally useless off the bike. I suppose you could wear the socks and I sometimes do when I run out of ordinary socks!

But quite a lot of the mtb/gravel clothing is quite wearable outside of cycling. Right now I'm wearing high quality mtb/gravel shell shorts and they are really very comfortable indeed! I also often wear the more casual mtb tops and FiveTen flat shoes are very wearable off the bike.

So if you are looking for something that is really comfortable to ride in and still reasonably multi-functional then the mtb/gravel scene is the place to look.

I generally ride before going to the gym and do my workout in bibs and a cycling jersey. So far no one in the gym has commented.

On the other hand, if I wore normal gym attire on a bike ride, I would have to be ducking slung stones and arrows all the way home ......

Thanks for the tips… I’ll check out the MTB/Gravel clothing next time I’m in the LBS and/or fitness store.

It is very curious how, on a bicycle enthusiasts forum, people seem afraid to wear bicycle specific clothing for fear of not fitting in with others off the bike. Brag up how hard one rides here, blend in as a non cyclist out there. It's as if the car-centric mindset has people worried about being seen as a "cyclist".

I don't care what anyone else wears but to read people post how proud they are that they don't/or have never worn cycling kit is kind of weird. I can't think of another sport where that happens.

Cycling kit only suggests one thing about me: I ride a bicycle and am doing something healthy. Not afraid to own that.

In Europe there seems to be a split between utility cycling (day to day use) in which people wear their daily clothes, and sport cycling in which people wear activity specific clothes. Lot's of people cycle there so I suspect there isn't much hoo haw about what you wear.

Cycling is much more a minority activity in NA and I sense there is that utility/sport split as well, but the lines in General cycling here are blurred with many in the first camp not wanting to be visibly associated with the second it seems.

Wear what you want but there shouldn't be any negative connotation on a bicycle forum regarding wearing bicycle specific clothing.

I think it's just the "Look how little I spent" that happens in every activity or hobby.

I don't have a need for multi purpose clothing, maybe some do?:foo: I guess a cycling jersey might have some utility while doing yard work, carry a pruner in the pocket. Chances of a snag or pine tar could make it an expensive choice over a t shirt. Wearing bibs while mowing the lawn? Noooo.

I think that's a generous way of putting it. I think that it's more along the lines of, "I am so smart that I, alone, have figured out the Universal Best Value in this endeavor. If you have spent more than me, you're a fool that has been separated from your money."

I'm devolving. In time I'll be wearing flip-flops, cutoff 501's and Fruit-of-the Loom tanks and ride a cruiser.

For now, guilt compels me to wear out my overpriced Lycra products and continue to crash my carbon bike until it breaks. :rolleyes:

Perhaps...

I would never knock anyone for being frugal, especially if on a budget. I'm firmly in the "do it with what ya got till you can afford better" camp. Also subscribe to the "good enough" and kiss principles.

I'm refering more of the wearing a diaper/mamil type comments. I qualify as a mamil which isn't a bad thing. Better that than being a cpibrac (couch potato in bath robe and crocs). I've been wearing lycra based sports gear for multiple outdoor pursuits, along with various forms of polar fleece, since the 1980's. That's what I'm interested in - that's what I wear.

Some of my non-cycling clothing which I use for cycling costs as much and even more then some cycling-specific clothing.

That's easy to believe. Somewhere in my drawer I have a pair of $10 cycling shorts, a pair of $20 cycling bib tights, and a $5 cycling jersey. Every pair of non-cycling shorts and every t-shirt I own cost more than that.

Or, you know, it might actually be helpful information to someone who needs or wants to keep this within a tight budget how it can be done.

Frankly, that you think there needs to be a justification for discussing inexpensive options that people use smacks of snobbery.

Easy rule for keeping things civil--if you're explaining what you're doing, it's neither snobbery or reverse snobbery. If you're making fun of the other guy for spending too little or too much, it's snobbery or reverse snobbery.

If you're ascribing some hidden agenda and/or concealed insult in people posting what they're doing, it's pretty obvious that you're actually just projecting and that you're looking down on those people for making choices you don't approve of (i.e., snobbery/reverse snobbery).

We All have problems.

We all have character flaws. We all have insecurities and we all sometimes attack others because we feel insecure.

We are all competitive and sometimes that gets out of hand. We can all get too caught up in the words on the screen and forget that there are people associated with those words (Seriously, how many of these nit-picking debates would have been instantly shut down in a face-to-face conversation by the person saying, "Come on, you know what I mean." ??)

I think a lot of what we start to chat about here gets taken too far simply because all we see are words.

I have had (I am sure most of us have had) countless conversations like this with real people, face to face, where we don't get too involved because we are all comrades, fellow riders, and we don't get too hung up about gear or kit or anything .... there might be a guy on a CF superbike with the latest everything wearing full team kit, and a guy in shorts and a button-down shirt with the sleeves torn off, sitting on a vintage steel bike he is halfway through upgrading, and another guy on an old Ti bike , and a bunch of guys and girls on generic mid-range bikes, CF or Al with CF forks, and some are in various kits and some in T-shirts ... and we all are halfway through the ride, stopping for drinks at a small store, and chatting about bikes and gear and rides ... no one gets too uptight.

Same thing here, where we can't see that everyone is smiling and laughing and not taking anything too seriously ... and we all act like donkeyholes, or chickens looking for the slightest spot of blood to peck .... and I do it to (in fact, I do it better than all of you ... and I have the best chicken-pecking kit, and I paid the perfect amount to get the perfect balance between cost and quality .... )

That is why I have learned not to take Anything posted on BF too seriously. This medium lends itself to self-indulgence, aggressive self-defense, passive aggression, and the airing of all of our particular psychological oddities, and also mutes some of our best qualities, such as cooperation and easy understanding, which just happens face-to-face.

As I write this, I am wearing the best computer-keyboard typing kit, and my keyboard is a pro-level model, and it's nobody's business if I can use to to pro levels. I scorn you amateurs wearing "normal" clothes tying on "normal" keyboards--and more so if you can out-type me.

There doesn't need to be justification for wearing Home Depot safety glasses for cycling or gardening gloves or anything of that nature - I really don't care what someone chooses to wear. But when that same person insinuates that it's foolish to spend any more than what it costs for Home Depot safety glasses or gardening gloves (which happens so, so often), then we've got problems and I'm going to call out their judgmentalism.

I agree with that. But the hypothetical was a person who is proud of how little they spend, and taking an implied reverse snobbery from that. I don't think that implies other people are foolish for spending more, and one shouldn't just assume the implied slight. If someone says they spend a zillion dollars on their socks and they enjoy showing them off, I don't take offense until they claim that you can't be a "serious cyclist" without doing that, or the even more dismissive "I suppose it doesn't really matter what you wear on your feet if all you're doing is riding 3 blocks to the store". I've had variations on that last one lobbed at me personally several times on BF, and given how far and how fast I ride, I find that insulting as hell.

I'm not proud of the fact that I ride in $50 sneakers, but I'm not ashamed of it either, it's just what works best for me. It implies nothing about your choice of shoes.

I don't remember who it was, but we had a self-professed gram shaver explain that he was under no illusion that a few grams made any real difference to his speed, but he enjoyed the intellectual puzzle of putting together the lightest bike possible. I could see how someone could enjoy the intellectual puzzle of seeing how little they could spend and continue to ride a lot with some intensity. We all have our different ways of looking at this as a hobby.

The OP asks, “I thought I'd ask the group here: What benefits do cycling wear bring, and how significant are those benefits?” and out came all of the common ALTERNATIVES TO CYCLING WEAR responses. That’s why these threads go the way they do. I didn’t see one post single anyone else out by name or vivid description, yet a few names were hurled (Cycling Kit Karen, for example.) This is why we can’t have nice things.

This was a stupid post and after reflection I've deleted it.:o

See quote 1, then see quote 2, you bloody hypocrite. You clearly said in quote 1 that no hints were needed to figure out who you were talking about, but now you're hiding behind not naming names?

I have nothing civil to say to that.

...he posted.

If one goes through life constantly looking for insult, one will invariably find it.

My "mileage" in this regard may differ from many yet it is what it is:

• I ride 95% solo, and when not, it's leisure rides with beer and such. So there is no need to "fit in".
• That said, I own a couple of cycling jerseys, as they do what they are designed for. But it's the wicking properties and bright colours that I feel are worth it.
• I've done a couple centuries+ wearing a cotton t-shirt, some very basic everyday shorts over cheap polyester undies, with a backpack (containing normal food like boiled egg & ham sandwiches). Felt tired afterwards, but none of that dreaded chafing or dying due to weraring wet cotton (the temperatures were on the mellow side though, around 25°C)
• Butt comfort is a function of bike fit, appropriate saddle and getting used to spend several hours riding. If your derriére is not accustomed to being sat upon in that specific configuration - no chamois will do any wonders.
• Gloves are a good investment. Especially if you have sweaty palms, like I do; for me that is the main reason to wear them. The eventually inevitable next crash too.

But sometimes insults come looking for you.

See signature line below.