Fashion Blogging for the Apocalypse

This was meant to be a joke. I go through phases for my personal style. Sometimes Wild Weird West Hexslinger, soemtimes it's Faerie Queen Is Very Pissed Off with a touch of Urban Fantasy, sometimes it's Mad Max: Fury Road. Fashion blogging for the apocalypse started out when I was in one of the more Furiosa Will Kick Your Ass In These Boots phases. At some point I did realize that since we are in the beginning throes of at least an apocalyptic time in history if not an actual apocalypse (probably not) and I figured, well. Might as well get this into an actual blog! If nothing else because it will help me organize my own thoughts as to how I want to look and present myself.

Let's start with some basics.

Your Essential Bag
Whenever possible, go hands free. This may mean a hip pouch (I wear the Blaster 4.0 by Jungle Tribe, they're a bit spendy at the $250-350 range but mine is very durable and fits everything I need) or it may mean a stylish mini-backpack. Bonus road warrior points if it's a convertible so you can be a stealth warrior by slinging it over your shoulder as a regular purse. It should be big enough to carry your essentials, which I'll go over shortly. It should fit securely around your body but not impede any day to day activities; if you sit in a chair at a desk or on a commute you should be able to sit with good posture with it on. If you do a lot of moving around, you should be able to move without it bouncing against you or catching on things. It should be durable and depending on the cost, last you at least a year or more. You definitely shouldn't be buying a daily bag more than once a year even if it only costs you $20, because the inconvenience of getting used to a new bag and repacking everything you carry day to day isn't worth it.

Whenever possible, go hands free. I say this because, of course, this is the apocalypse! For our peace of mind we're going to pretend it's a Mad Max/Escape from LA type of apocalypse, a fictional one because this is about fun and fashion, not serious things. But whenever possible you should go hands free because you never know when you're going to have to fight off an incursion of Warboys or Tusken Raiders. Or you might have to repair your cobbled-together dirt bike, tend to your animal mount, or something else that needs all available hands. You don't want to just set your bag down, that's a good way for raiders to steal it, but you don't want to have to be constantly hitching it over your shoulder either. So a hands free bag means a backpack, a hip pouch, or a fanny pack.

Your Essential Kit
Because this is a movie style apocalypse we're going to assume we find food, water, and tampons as we need them. In our apocalypse, your essential kit will consist of these things:

• Wallet, for carrying items that can be exchanged for goods and services, photographic relics of happier days past, an identicard to remind you of who you are in the wasteland, and perhaps a steel plate on which you have hammered out your "in case you find me unconscious" details. An I Aten't Dead card, if you will. 
• Your digital communication and information device. Look, these things are just goddamn handy.
• Emergency medicine, such as an epi-pen or an asthma inhaler.
• Your knife, because you always have a knife on you, don't you? Typically this will be a pocket knife or multi-tool with multiple functions, because these are very useful. But if you're like me and you just carry a folding blade around you to cut things (fruit, I mean fruit, stop looking at me like that) make sure you know your local knife laws. This is a summary page for the US knife laws, if anyone would like to share other country's knife laws they can do so.

Other things that can go in your kit include spare jewelry or makeup in case you have to be glamorous to present yourself to a warlord at a moment's notice, a pocket wet wipe in case of same, a cleaning cloth for your vision goggles, a data storage device in case you need to steal the plans for the super secret evil base, some tokens that can be exchanged for transport or services, or a small defensive device that is not your knife, again, in case of raiders. However you pack it, your essential bag should be light enough for you to carry for at least eight hours of a day without it noticeably weighing you down. 

Your Outfit

Again, we're only playing at being road warriors, so we're going to assume we have some choice in the matter of what we wear other than 'what I can pull off that thing I just killed' or 'what was left in the store that's been picked over by raiders for fifteen years'. And I'm not going to address the issue of who dresses to what degree of fancy just yet, this is strictly the choosing your outfit portion of the day: choose something you can run in. Ideally choose something you can fight in, but fighting requires a particular set of skills, and not all of us have that. So choose something you can run in. If necessary, test this out when you put it on, when you try it on, when you buy it. Take long steps. Reach for the ceiling and touch the floor. Squat a couple times. Twist side to side, make sure you have the freedom of movement to get away from the raiders if you have to. This goes extra for footwear. Make sure your sneakers and boots have tread, make sure your heels don't hobble you too much. 

This seems like a good amount to discuss for a first test-the-waters post. Or the sand. I'm not sure where our apocalypse is yet. Feel free to comment and let me know if you liked it! Or if there's something you want me to cover, any questions you may have about the coming apocalypse and how to style yourself for it.