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Fanny pack chic?

By Diana Lasko dlasko@heraldstandard.Com 4 min read

If someone would have told me in in the mid-90s that the nylon lavender, green and black, and polka-dotted fanny packs I possessed would come back in style, I would have hung onto them.

Yep, I didn’t believe it either at first. But they was the fanny pack from Coachella and Chanel on runways everywhere. Then I did a search on “Urban Outfitters,” the over-priced, trend-setting, “we’re gonna show you we can make anything popular” retailer, only to find they were SOLD-OUT of the “bo-ho chic Ecote studded fanny pack.”

So that’s what I was in 1993 with my fanny pack stuffed full of toddler cookies and snacks, car keys, anti-bacterial wipes, hair ties, band-aids and a tiny tube of triple antibiotic ointment — bo-ho chic. Who knew?

I’m not ashamed to admit I had a fanny pack, and I wore it! (Feeling obligated to defend myself). It was functional, practical and I never had to worry about keeping track of my purse and my tornado-like little darlings. I had two free hands to catch those little whirling dervishes.

Then one day, fanny packs were deemed “very uncool.” Society had turned on the functional little unisex bag that made life easy for the hiker, the biker, and moms everywhere. Embarrassed by my fashion blunder, I myself turned my back on the organizing little marvel, vowing to never be caught dead wearing one again.

The latest fanny pack resurgence makes me think, if you stick a high enough price tag on anything and an upscale retailer touts it as the next best thing, people will flock to buy it — no matter how ridiculous it may be (think: pet rocks, mood rings, acid washed jeans, mesh tank tops and Furby). And when retailers run out of ideas, they revisit the past (think: pet rocks, mood rings, acid-washed jeans, mesh tank tops and Furby).

Do retailers lead us around by the nose or do they simply answer our demands?

Remember genie pants and (heaven help us) stirrup pants? Whoever thought those looked good? Yet, the fashion industry shows us a waif-like model wearing them and soon the mass public is waiting for Walmart to give us racks of puffy sleeved shirts, velour track suits, and jackets with large shoulder pads or shelves of dark lip liner, tattoo choker necklaces, and shutter sunglasses (thanks Kanye!).

Sometimes I think it’s all a big experiment and there are boardrooms all over the world with manipulative marketing gurus sitting around a table betting one another what they can make the “lemmings” do.

Now, back to the fanny pack.

Years after the craze had died down in the 90s, wearing a fanny pack was such a fashion faux pas, that it showed up in the “don’t” column of every single fashion magazine.

I can remember my own daughters saying to me, “Mom if you ever wore a fanny pack, we would pretend we didn’t know you.”

Yet those same judgmental princesses are now changing their tune.

“Mom look at these cute fanny packs for $54 on Etsy,” my oldest daughter said.

I replied, “Wait, what? I wonder if I still have one of my old fanny packs or do I wait for Vera Bradley to make one I like?”

“Wait for Vera mom, the old ones look stupid,” my youngest chimed in.

“Even though they serve the same purpose?” I asked.

“Maybe mom, but the Vera ones would be way cuter,” they both said.

So what did I do next?

Yep you guessed it — searched the Vera Bradley website looking for fanny packs.

In a boardroom somewhere, a manipulative marketing guru just won a bet.

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