Selfie Does Safari Style
I don’t know about y’all but it really feels like it will never be fall here. It continues to be mid-90s and high humidity so it feels like soup outside while my IG feed fills up with persons laughing in their sweaters probably eating soup. So while it still feels like summer, Imma try to wrap up some of my summer posts. This year, Mr. Selfie and I were lucky enough to accompany Nana and Grandma Susie on safari in Tanzania.* We’ve been lucky enough to go to Tanzania before but never on such an epic safari trip so it was a world of firsts for us - camping in the heart of the Serengeti, falling asleep to the sounds of lions coughing, waking to the sounds of hyenas crying, driving the African “Massage” roads,** and drinking in the beautiful sunsets.***
Amongst the many, many things you learn on safari, something I did not know ahead of time was the various dress restrictions. You know how you see people in their khaki on safari and you’re like “Okay. Calm down, GREG. You’re not Dr. Livingston.” But it turns out frickin Greg in his khakis were right - there’s a reason why you don’t see people rocking bright, beautiful outfits in the endless sea of grass. First of all, bright colors can deter animals for whom specific colors and other colors can attract animals so as to eat you - so no bright colors. As a human who essentially only owns bright colors, I was perplexed by this and then thought, “Well, no worries! I also own black and white which is chic.” and that’s going to be a “no”, as well. Black, white and navy attract tsetse flies which are like hard-core, swarming horse flies which a bite to boot so, no on that too. To recap - that’s no black, white, navy, purple, red, blue, green, yellow, etc. Which left me with a Selfie conundrum of what the heck to wear. This is not a problem for normal humans but I had my heart set on “Safari chic” and this is where we landed. Additionally, per our tour book, we were also not allowed to have a bag that weighed over 44 lbs including our gear and whatever we needed in Amsterdam. So, without further ado, here are Selfie’s tips on Safari wear.
1) Protective Items
There’s no way to slice or dice it - you gotta have items that cover your face. A hat will keep your face and scalp from burning. A buff and/or bandana keeps the dust out of your sinuses.^
2)Pick a color scheme
This one seems…so obvious for this trip because you have like three colors left - khaki, olive green and grey. I look gross in two of those colors so, I ended up with most of my clothes in olive green. A color I don’t hate. It obviously makes it easy to mix and match.
3) Layer Up!
Layers are your friends for the obvious reason but also, they help break up monochromatic outfits. In a similar vein, so des mixing up the types of fabric. Everything is going to look pulled together because it’s the same color but putting a sheer shirt, with a cotton bodysuit and boyfriend khakis, makes it look purposeful and (hopefully) a little bit more stylish.
4) Accessories Make it Fun
Adding a belt to my outfits gave them actual shape. Wearing my aviators, big hoops or the print headband I picked up, put my spin on it. The cute bandana Gma. Susie gave all of us, made us a cool group. My purple hair is just vacation Selfie.
5) Don’t Overspend
Listen, clothes that go with hiking boots that aren’t my normal hiking clothes are just not my thing. I had nothing in my closet that met that criteria and I’m not going to wear full safari outfits in my real life. So, I scouted for sales on the items that were most important (my jacket and the hiking pants because I needed to wear them for two weeks with minimal washing) and so I spent way less on shirts, purchasing all of them from Amazon.
So, that’s it! Have you been on any trips where you needed your clothes to be functional and stylish? Backpacking across Europe? Longer trips with minimal weight limits? Let me know in the comments!