Nathan’s Running Belt Waist Pack is crafted from an ultra-lightweight neoprene fabric, which promises to stay firmly in place as you run. But the belt offers enough space to secure your must-haves, without weighing you down as you embark on long runs. The storage situation may seem a little limited, especially compared to other fanny packs on the market. The larger one can accommodate your phone, while the smaller one is fit to hold valuables like keys and money. The bag is equipped with two external zipper storage pockets. Nathan’s Running Belt Waist Pack boasts the low-profile design you’d expect from a running belt, but it still offers plenty of storage space for your essentials. The bag comes in an array of colors and prints, and it can extend up to 43 inches.
Though Waterfly’s Fanny Pack offers ample storage space, it promises to remain lightweight enough that you can comfortably wear it during travel, everyday use, and some physical activities. And if there’s anything you want to keep extra-protected, you can store it in the bag’s fourth pocket-a hidden zipper pocket tucked away on the bag's waistband. The main zipper compartment can handle some larger essentials (like phones), while two discreet zipper pockets can secure smaller valuables (like wallets, cards, and headphones). Note that water resistant isn’t the same thing as waterproof, so just don’t take it swimming. For starters, it’s water resistant, so you can expect it to protect your essentials in case of splashes and spills. Women customized them for their hobbies or life stage, from nursing to mourning.Our top pick may be lightweight and budget friendly, but it boasts many of the features you’d expect from a larger, more expensive belt bag. Worn by women at all levels of society, chatelaines functioned “like a customized Swiss Army knife.” Seamstresses would carry stitching tools, nurses medical equipment, and royal ladies luxury status items such as watches and fans. This really took off in the Victorian era, according to Cummins who wrote a book about chatelaines, a popular 18th century device that attached an assortment of handy objects to a woman’s dress like an elaborate key ring. “The concept of waist-hung items is almost universal across all cultures,” Genevieve Cummins told Collector’s Weekly. Ditto kimonos: in 17th century Japan pouches, baskets, or boxes called “inro” were attached to the robes with cords called “netsuke.” Native Americans crafted beaded buffalo hide pouches and medieval European Christians carried daily necessities and coins for the poor in alms purses. Since togas lacked pockets, Ancient Romans attached coin purses to their arms or belts. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics depict men wearing bags on belts. In fact, hip-hugging bags appear in some form in every culture through the ages, according to Racked. © South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology/Ochsenreiter/Alfons & Adrie Kennis Otzi the Iceman, a 5,000 year old ice mummy, wore a fanny pack.īelt bags are nothing if not practical, which explains why they were already in use in the Copper Age. The mummy, who became an international celebrity called Otzi the Iceman, was astonishingly well-preserved, right down to his accessories, which included a calfskin belt affixed with a pouch containing handy items such as “tinder fungus, a scraper, a boring tool, a bone awl, and a flint flake.” They weren’t wrong, but this particular hiker had lain there for roughly 5,000 years.
At first, rescuers assumed they’d recovered the body of an unfortunate hiker. The fanny pack was slipping out of style.īut that’s also the year that, high in the mountains along the Italian-Austrian border, a pair of German tourists stumbled across a frozen corpse. After more or less peaking in 1988, the year Adweek named the fanny pack the hottest product on the market, a proliferation of tacky logo-adorned iterations had cheapened what was once a straightforward functional accessory. The nylon atrocity that had swept fashion in the 1980s with the first wave of athleisure (sweat pants and tracksuits as fashion) was already beginning its decline. 1991 is an important year in this story, but not for the reason you may think.