Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what to feature for Man Bag Monday. Occasionally, I venture out to find an interesting bag and find nothing but tan leather weekenders and black messenger bags staring back at me, and what’s there left to say about any of those bags, unless they have a great (or astronomical) price point? Today was not one such day, because I found the 3.1 Phillip Lim Men’s Fanny Pack staring at me. Where do I begin?
Selling fanny packs to female customers is hard enough. Designers have tried to rebrand them as “belt bags” or “waist bags,” but we all know what we’re looking at, and we have all the negative associations from the 80s to go right along with it. Male accessory costumers are customarily even more tentative to go for a piece that might find them on the receiving end of ridicule or questions of their masculinity, and if one such piece exists, it is most certainly a floral fanny pack.
Not even East Dane, the site that’s selling this bag, can bear to style it as intended in the site’s modeling photo, choosing instead to have the male model clutch the bag by the top handle with the waist strap entirely obscured. While the site clearly isn’t trying to hide the bags essential fanny pack-ness, it does appear to be signaling to potential customers that, hey, you don’t have to wear it like that! You can wear it like a satchel! Wait, guys, come back!
The hardcore menswear crowd will likely wear a piece like this as a badge of honor, a demonstration for all of how dedicated they are to their weird #menswear looks. As of this writing, East Dane boasts only two of these bags left in stock, so it may be happening as we speak. Buy through East Dane for $675.
