Canberra's Culture Cycle knitted activewear wins Australian Wool Fashion Award

The University of Canberra professor started her own micro business Culture Cycle five years ago, selling knitted cycle activewear.

Her range has just won first place in the knitwear category at the Australian Wool Fashion Awards, held in Tamworth.

Russo said the machine-knitted range, which is fully machine washable, is the perfect alternative to lycra - and more fashionable.

"Wool is natural fibre that breathes, it's very hard wearing, it is very comfortable to cycle in - polyesters get quite sweaty - but also because they're presentable fabrics to be wearing off the bike as well," she said.

"So [the range is about] being able to have outfits that were appropriate for cycling but also looked good and sat nicely."

A keen cyclist herself, Russo started the business with the intent of trying to encourage more women to get on bikes.

"In Australia we've got on average one bike in every household but we have a very low rate of people that cycle regularly, and even lower [rate] of women, so that really kind of propelled me," she said.

"And I think people get it confused - lycra is for long road cycling, it's not for going down to the shop. And so I think that's the image that people have of that racer cyclist and I think in Australia we don't have that other image of just people taking the kids to school, going down to the shop, going out to dinner."

It took about almost 18 months to perfect the four looks that Russo submitted to the Australian Wool Fashion Awards, and now she is in the process of trying to expand her business.

"I want to try and find some funding to put together a short production run out of the CSIRO's fibre mills in Geelong - they have all of the next level industrial machines," she said.

"I now need to work out how to kind of scale up. This is the bigger issue about all of us who work in these really small micro enterprises is how do you now go to the next level."