Preparing my wardrobe…and soul

When you’re planning a long trip, one of the first irrational things you decide is that none of your current wardrobe could possibly be suitable for your new life of adventure. There’s some truth to that – when living out of a backpack you want clothes that are lighter and less keen to cling to your sweat and smells than your usual cotton numbers. But it still feels wrong to spend so much time obsessing about travel fashion choices when your standards of general appearance and cleanliness are inevitably going to deteriorate after the first four days.

As I search endlessly for those perfect pieces that will match everything in my bag, never moisten, and not make me look like a tool or a tourist, there’s a little voice in the back of my head telling me that it might be overkill for someone who still wears t-shirts from Target to work every day when she has the luxury of a closet.

Still, I want to be a properly attired vagabond, and after countless trips to overpriced specialty stores, I have had my first travel revelation: there is something terribly wrong with the “activewear” clothing available to women today.

Begin rant…Why do outwear and sporting goods companies think that the only appropriate colors for a female to be wearing whilst running a marathon or summiting a mountain are coral, teal, pink, baby blue and mint? Can the pasty girls get ONE earth tone option? I realize that a navy or a brown might clash with the rest of the rack, but you’re REI, not a wedding Pinterest board.

Also, when did they start only offering tops form fitted for an hourglass figure? This cut leaves more room for child bearing hips than I personally posses, so it ends up looking like my torso is one leg in a pair of bell bottoms. Even for ladies blessed with this shape, is it really necessary for a jacket to accentuate one’s curves? Jackets are things you wear for warmth, typically over other things; they are not the top half of your futuristic spacesuit. I understand not wanting something so untailored that it’s unflattering, but I think we can find a compromise between a body glove and a Starter jacket….End rant.

Anyway, the accidental result of all this unnecessary shopping was a new wardrobe made up entirely of the one neutral still available to women: grayscale.

I assume that after one or two days in Peru I will transform into a deep individual with too much perspective to care about such silly things. Fortunately I will have a lot of dark clothing to match my new, pensive self. More insightful posts to follow.