The Blog
How To Wear a Fanny Pack
The fanny pack turned 60 a few scant years ago. This item was initially invented by an Australian woman, Melba Stone, in 1962. Immediately, this accessory became a huge success in style for its practicality and ease of wear.
A fanny pack offers practical storage for essentials beyond your basic wallet and wearables. In addition, unlike a purse or a briefcase, it is worn close to the body. This means that you can have extensive storage while keeping your hands free.
After entering its prime in the 1980s, the fanny pack entered a dark age. During this time, it became synonymous with unaware tourists and largely fell into disuse.
The time has come for a fanny pack renaissance. There is no singular, definitive style for the present day. We’ve entered a sleek world where, more than ever, style is dictated by personal values rather than overarching fashion empires. In that world, again for its practicality, the fanny pack has entered regular use again.
There is, however, a proper way to style things. Below, find out the essentials behind styling a fanny pack, and uncover new ways to wear them.
Balance It Properly On Your Shoulders
There are a couple of ways to wear your fanny pack. One thing we recommend is to make sure your pack is roughly balanced on your shoulders. Alternatively, if you prefer wearing it on one side, we recommend changing up that side every now and again.
Admittedly, there’s no fashion-related reason why your fanny pack has to be on one side or the other. If you store a lot in your pack, there’s a pretty good health reason.
Health issues from improperly wearing bags are fairly well documented. This can include scoliosis, back pain, and general stress over time. For optimal balance, wear your fanny pack only slightly to one side. Alternatively, you can wear it across your body for a perfectly centered fit. Keep the bag light and change it up now and then to walk forward in confidence — in your style and more.
Wear It as an Alternative To Bulkier Bags
Travel bags are absolutely phenomenal when you have a lot to carry. When setting out or returning from road trips or air travel, you’ll likely need one. For everyday use and shorter trips, you likely don’t need to carry that much with you. That sweet spot is where fanny bags come into play.
With fanny packs, you can still carry your wallet, keys, cards, some toiletries, personal effects, phone, and more. These small-sized bags can fit an outsized number of items inside them. Plus, they don’t have the bulk of backpacks or purses. The reason behind fanny packs is portability and practicality, first and foremost.
Keep Personal Effects On During Workouts
One of the major issues when working out outside the gym is where to store your goods. Keeping your phone, keys, and wallet alone firmly in place while running is a challenge without specialized gear. Thankfully, fanny packs provide a specialized piece of gear to keep all your little personal effects in place.
Once you’re done working out, the pack still serves a practical purpose. Wear it out and about as a functional fashion accessory.
Use Them for Travel
We know: Fanny packs have an image strongly associated with tourism. However, there’s a crucial reason for this association: They are really convenient for travel.
When traveling, you don’t want to make yourself an easy target for pickpockets. The more you carry with you, the slower you go by necessity. Fanny packs help you stay on the go and keep your goods with you. With a fanny pack, you never have to let anything you carry leave your sight.
Especially if you wear your fanny pack across your chest, it’ll be difficult for anything to be taken. Any potential pickpockets would have to sacrifice subtlety. That alone makes you an unlikely target.
Fanny packs let you keep just enough on your person to keep your pockets uncluttered. You can keep essentials like your wallet and phone in your pockets and keep less-immediately needed items in your pack.
Bringing your fanny pack with you for travel is a great idea. Before that happens, you’ll have to decide on the fanny pack you’re using in the first place.
How Not To Wear Your Fanny Pack
If you choose to wear your fanny pack, we should start with how not to style them. The classic fanny pack is brightly colored, with a zipper and adjustable strap. We have our own opinions when it comes to choosing between nylon and leather. However, we admit that we lean towards modern evolutions of the fanny pack.
Whatever fanny pack you choose to wear, you should get one that matches your general style. If you favor bright and bold, vintage-style apparel, grab a vintage-inspired fanny pack. Otherwise, consider something more suited to modern sensibilities.
While there are plenty of places on your body you can wear your fanny pack, there’s one place you shouldn’t. Wearing your fanny pack on your back, at waist height, is less than ideal for a variety of reasons.
First of all, it makes it a prime target for pickpockets. Secondly, you’ll have to adjust it whenever you want to sit down. The last issue is that putting it on your back is aesthetically awkward. When one pictures that hypothetical unaware tourist, they imagine these fanny packs in the hip-high, vulnerable spot.
The don’ts of wearing a fanny pack are fairly few. The ways that fanny packs can be styled are much more significant and numerous. Below, we’re going to begin our style guide in earnest.
Choosing Your Fanny Pack
Mixing quality, practicality, and attractiveness in design is Andar’s specialty. Our personal offering in the realm of fanny packs is The Indie. This humble pack boasts some ultimately remarkable features.
To begin, the whole piece is highlighted by a premium full-grain leather exterior. The saguaro iteration of the Indie is also made from cactus leather. This leather maintains much of the durability and quality of traditional full-grain leather while also being vegan.
One of the strongest alternatives to traditional leather is cactus leather. Studies show that regular cactus leather is effective as an alternate material to animal leather. Under all normal stress tests, this type of leather performs admirably.
Regardless of what type of leather you choose for your fanny pack, the inherent quality is a great boon. The look of leather makes it highly versatile, with either fashion-forward or casual outfits.
The piece also features multiple pockets for easy compartmentalization. The main pocket of the bag allows for interior organization. Meanwhile, a quick-access exterior zipper makes for the perfect storage for smaller items.
The strap is adjustable from 35’’ to 55’’, allowing an easily customized fit along multiple points on the body. Brass hardware makes it so that the piece holds together well and has a classic shimmer. All the while, a one-year warranty adds an extra layer of protection to every piece.
Bringing Fanny Packs Back
Fashion trends aren’t as singular or as all-consuming as they used to be. Now, numerous different styles coexist and brush up against each other at one time. Because of that, now that fanny packs are back, it’s hard to see them ever leaving.
People are always going to need practical and stylish bags to help get them from point A to point B. With the right fanny pack, you have the most effective, portable travel option available.
Sources:
Letter of Recommendation: Fanny Packs I The New York Times
Sustainable Leather Alternative I California State Polytechnic Institution
