The icon of an iconic color gives a lesson in Casually Deliberate. 1
In grade school, a teacher once asked me to name my favorite color, a query to which I responded with the only logical answer for any prepubescent boy surrounded by scary girls in a small classroom: “Celeste.”
“No, you have to pick a real color.”
While the rest of the world believes the most iconic color in Cycling is made-up, our little world is fascinated by it’s legend. Bianchi once proposed to do away with the color and replace it with another more usual hue and the public overwhelmingly rejected the notion, permanently cementing that particular shade of hangover-green as the official color of the brand.
No one knows the origin of the color, but there are two prevailing theories on the matter. The first is that Eduardo Bianchi matched the color to the Queen of Italy’s eyes, whom he was teaching to ride a bicycle. I don’t buy this theory, personally. I mean, this was before color photography or the internet and no one has a good enough memory to match a color to anything without having a photo to work from. It’s too far-fetched.
The other theory is that Eduardo needed paint and was feeling a bit pinchy with the pennies when he came across an enormous quantity of gray and blue paint at a price – possibly from the Italian Navy which was trying to unload an inventory of paint after it realized that fighting a war on the seas is the worst kind of war you can fight because you have to ration the vino rosso. Eduardo mixed the two colors and out came this iconic shade.
My beloved Bianchi TSX is red, a fact which has me constantly wondering whether I should have it repainted in celeste. A red Bianchi? I love that bike, but who let that sneak out of the factory? My other beloved Bianchi, my XLEv2, is black and yellow with celeste lettering. When I ordered it, the owner of the bike shop – Grand Performance in Saint Paul, Minnesota – pressed me on the fact that only the black frames were available as all the celeste ones had been sold. He wound up giving me a discount out of pity.
I love the fact that no one I interact with outside the Cycling world has any idea that this color exists, or that legends have formed around its existence. These are the sorts of things that separate us from the masses. Vive la Vie Velominatus.
1 Fausto is not, in fact, riding a Bianchi in this photo. The photo is simply too rad not to use, and its black and white.
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Frank, your first paragraph reminds me of the time in elementary school when I was asked to name an inanimate object, the definition being something not living. I replied "corpse." A correct answer (like yours) but not quite what the teacher was looking for. I'm sure your teacher took a mental note: "need to keep an eye on that boy Strack . . . "
That Gimondi pic? 100% Italian perfection.
Out of respect, no other bike manufacturer should use celeste. I'm looking at you, Condor.
Perhaps he matched it to the moss on all the sunken warships of Il Duce? But the eye color story is better than the surplus paint one for sheer flattery.
I've read (probably around here) that Celeste came to be because Bianchi paint shop employees wanted to find out exactly how colorblind Edoardo Bianchi was, by mixing in green paint with blue until he noticed.
It's probably not true, but I liked that version.
@Oli
Crap!
@Dom, thanks for the clarification! I thought it didn't look like Coppi, but the various photo captions I was seeing all said it was him.
@cognition
Sweet baby jeebus... now i gotta wipe the drool off my keyboard.
This just came across our tumblr.
@frank
It's a good think that frames from back then had a completely different geometry as that short stumpy thing on the left would be completely useless for you in this day and age.
If I had room to hang yet another bike on the wall of my bedroom (there a 3 already) and 2 more in the spare bedroom it would have to be a steel celeste Bianchi . To find room for one more bike in any other color than celeste would not entice me to find the space for another. It would of course also have to don a steel fork to match the skinny pipes on the frame.
Is it just me or has anyone else ever noticed how uninteresting it is to walk into a bike shop nowadays and find there is nothing to see ,seems bikes now are devoid of character unless of course on a rare occasion you come across a nice shiny new lugged steel frame built up with campy sitting all lonely in a corner ,ya just want to give it a big hug and take it home.
@frank
Keepers should do a "Requiem" series article on pantographing. So fucking rad.
@ChrisO
Well, it's still fucking gross.