Trek-Segafredo unveils 2021 kits

Refreshed from a successful sporting year, Trek-Segafredo is ready to embark on a new campaign in updated kits provided by our clothing partner Santini Cycling Wear. Italian national champion Elisa Longo Borghini and compatriot Nicola Conci visited the Bergamo-based factory to see where the magic happens and help us launch the new kits.

Our Women’s WorldTour winning team will retain their recognizable visual identity with a remixed color palette and the continuation of the popular torso pattern.

Lead designer Brian Lindstrom explains how we reached the new livery: “The women’s kit has a strong identity with the pattern; it seems to have taken hold and people like it. When designing the new kit, we thought about taking that foundation and spinning around the colors to see if we could get something fresh that updates it. The light blue is borrowed from our Trek Factory Racing cyclocross team. It’s been in our brand repertoire for a few years now, so it felt like a natural progression.”

Only the keenest eyes will be able to spot the minimal changes to the men’s kit. We’ve opted to retain our classy design from 2020 for the upcoming season.

“The current kit is an evolution of the last few years, but even if you go back to 2014 when we had our first Trek Factory Racing team, it was still really minimal and clean. It was black and white with some tonal pinstripes. The same idea held true then: we wanted to keep it clean, pretty minimal, and timeless. I think some of our kits have aged better than others, and over the years, we’ve learned through rider and fan feedback,” admits Lindstrom.

Trek DNA

“Trek over the years has defined its DNA of what a Trek kit looks like, so we’ve got a pretty good formula,” says Lindstrom. “We always like to be clean and classy with a minimal color palette that complements our sponsors’ logos. Then we go for some basic clean color blocking. We like our kits to be timeless.

“We try to provide a few different options to break outside the box to see how much we can push the envelope. We’ll throw some off-campus stuff in there that’s off-the-wall crazy that maybe Trek hasn’t done yet, but that we always consider whether it’s for a special limited kit or maybe one day the full season kit.”

We try to stay in our lane and have some consistency so that there is some identifiability in the peloton.

Stick or Twist?

It can be a tough call between taking the plunge with a new design or sticking with a popular kit. “It’s totally subjective, a lot of people love to have a brand-new crazy kit every year, and the media will go loud for it or hate it,” points our Lindstrom.

“Kits can be a love/hate thing,” he continues. “I do think there’s something to be said for a sport like cycling where it’s important to be able to identify a team in a peloton. We try to stay in our lane and have some consistency so that there is some identifiability in the peloton. I think if you look at the cycling teams over the last few decades, the ‘iconic’ kits and jerseys are probably going to be from teams who were consistent with their look and branding; for example, the 7-Eleven Team or Team Sky. Teams that knew how to hold onto something for a bit longer than one or two seasons. There are always going to be opportunities in certain races to do something fun.

For now, the new kits are sticking true to their established identities. “We decided to carry forward the look for the bikes and kit, but for 2022, we’ll see how that goes…” Lindstrom teases.

Green Kit

The production of our kits continues toward a bigger initiative to reduce our impact on the environment. To make our new 2021 kits Santini have collaborated with two local producers of sustainable fabrics. Corno’s Ecofabric RECY uses yarn recycled from materials that have been used or discarded in the environment. Native, an Ecoknit by Sitip, is recycled fibers and yarns created without using polluting chemicals. Additionally, the bib shorts feature the ground-breaking Impact panels, an anti-rip and anti-abrasion fabric from Sitip, extremely popular with our riders for the last two years.

“We’ve been working with Trek-Segafredo since 2018, and year after year, we’re more and more proud to continue our support,” comments Monica Santini, CEO of Santini Cycling Wear. “This commitment is part of our long tradition of clothing supplier for professional teams. The partnership with Trek-Segafredo also brought a strong eco-friendly footprint, thanks to the seasonal clothing delivery with zero plastic packaging. Most of all, the kit is made with fabrics derived from the latest generation of recycled yarns, which allowed us to guarantee our athletes top-quality clothing produced with a low-level environmental impact.”