The first book to give the cycling jersey the serious editorial treatment it deserves. 200 large-format pages, 400 images, and essays from William Fotheringham, David Millar and the design teams at Castelli, Sportful and Rapha.
The First Book to Do the Subject Justice
The Cycling Jersey is the first volume to give the cycling jersey the serious editorial treatment it deserves. Written by Oliver Knight and published by Three Back Pockets after a successful Kickstarter campaign, it documents the history, culture and craft of one of cycling’s most visually rich objects across 200 large-format pages. Rouleur Magazine described it as beautiful and enlightening. Road.cc awarded it 9 out of 10. Those verdicts hold.
Over 400 images fill the book, most photographed by Knight himself from his own collection and those of five other dedicated jersey collectors. Forty pages group jerseys by team, tracing the evolution of each design across seasons, followed by a further ten pages devoted to Grand Tour and Championship jerseys. The photography is presented large, clear and without fuss, on 150gsm Creator Silk stock that conveys the weight and texture of the objects it depicts.
The editorial content earns its place alongside the imagery. Commissioned essays from cycling correspondent William Fotheringham, menswear writer Josh Sims and Grand Tour cyclist David Millar give the book range and critical depth. Interviews with the world’s leading jersey collectors cover the market, the fakes, and the regrets. A section called The Creators draws on the design teams at Castelli, Sportful and Rapha for insight into how the modern race jersey is actually conceived and produced.
Monoro covers cycling as culture as much as sport. The cycling jersey is one of the objects that most clearly sits at that intersection, carrying team history, national identity, sponsor relationships and design thinking in a single piece of fabric. Knight treats it with the rigour those layers deserve, without turning the book into a catalogue or a nostalgia exercise. For anyone who follows cycling seriously and pays attention to how things look, this is the natural companion to Paul Smith’s Cycling Scrapbook in a considered library on the sport.
