Carry for Women

Start here Why this guide exists What this guide assumes about you, and what it sets out to answer.

Ask ten women who carry what made it finally click, and in our experience you'll rarely hear about a gun. You'll hear about the week they found a setup that worked with the clothes already in their wardrobe — and stopped having to choose, every morning, between being comfortable and being armed.

That's the whole job. Not picking a favorite holster: finding the combination that survives your actual day.

So that's how this guide is built. It starts with what you wear, where you spend your hours and what you'll realistically keep doing, and works back to the gear from there. You know your days better than we ever will. What we can bring is what we've learned from the people who wear our cases, and the honesty to tell you where they're the wrong answer.

The one idea this whole guide rests on

Carrying a firearm is a system, not a purchase. The gun, the holster, the belt or the thing standing in for a belt, the clothing, the position, and the practice all depend on each other. Change one and you change all of them.

In our experience, most carry gear is designed around a single assumption: a stiff belt, through sturdy loops, sitting at the waist. Plenty of what's in your wardrobe doesn't offer that — a dress, a skirt, leggings, scrubs, tailored trousers. Advice built on that one assumption simply runs out of road, and it tends to run out on the days you're busiest.

That isn't a problem with your wardrobe. It's just a different starting point, and it has good answers — which is what the rest of this guide is.

What "failure" actually looks like

Ask a room of experienced carriers what goes wrong and you'll hear about draw strokes and calibers. Ask them what actually went wrong in their own first year and you'll hear something much simpler:

• It was uncomfortable, so it came off at lunch.
• It didn't work with what she was wearing, so it stayed home.
• She couldn't reach it in the driver's seat, and realized that was where she spent most of her day.
• She was never sure whether it was showing, so she stopped enjoying leaving the house.

Notice that not one of those is a marksmanship problem. In our experience, the most common failure in concealed carry isn't a bad draw — it's not having the gun at all, because the rig didn't fit the day.

So that's the standard this guide is written to. Not "what's tactically optimal." What will you still be wearing in six months?

✦ The honest framing

We sell holsters. You should read everything here knowing that. What we've tried to do is make this guide worth your time even if you never buy anything from us — which is also why you'll find our own products' limitations written out in plain language, in the same size type as everything else.