The Blog
6 Top EDC Items: The Must Have List for Beginners
Filling Your Pockets With Necessities
On your way out of the house, you grab your coat, your keys, and a few special things sitting on your desk right by the door before you hop in your car. What are those few things you carry with you every day? They’re different for everyone. Wallets, headphones, lip balm, and sunglasses are usually staples. If you don’t know what your Every Day Carry lineup should be, don’t worry; we do.
Andar means “to carry” in Spanish, and we’ve designed a host of products that we want you to grab on your way out the door and keep forever. We make Andar products to persevere despite constant use. In other words, we want you to be able to use each of our products every single day without fear of ruining them or wearing them out because of the intensity of your lifestyle.
A curated EDC collection is a must for those whose life calls them to step into the unknown. You want a few things in your pocket that are known for their utility and dependability. There is a sense of comfort in being able to depend on something made with integrity and intentionality. At Andar, we are committed to minimalism, the philosophy that perfection is achieved through limitation, freedom through restriction. We refuse to believe that more is always more. We’ve seen it and we know that less is more.
EDC’s shouldn’t just be necessities, they should also be desired. Necessities can be anything we find in our junk drawers. We want our EDC’s to be those items we don’t just have to carry with us every day, but those things we want to carry with us every day.
So you’re an EDC beginner and want to know where to start with your Every Day Carry collection. We’ve got you covered. Below are a few of Andar’s handpicked EDC items to get you started on your way to a perfect EDC collection.
Must Have EDC Items
Check out some of our essential everyday items.
1. Taking the World Off Your Back: The Atlas
First up, The Atlas; it’s the wallet we designed for the traveler and wanderer. The Atlas is a vagabond’s best friend, and with it, you will have more of an idea of where you’re going, and less of a weight on your back (like the old myth goes). Outfitted with 2 card slots and an additional large slot for your passport, boarding pass, or other world currencies, The Atlas is perfect for the globetrotter among us. So many wallets are examples of trying too hard: they are bulky, inefficient, and ugly. This isn’t the case with The Atlas.
The Atlas is constructed from full-grain vintage leather. Andar is committed to exclusively using the highest quality leather. Full-grain leather is sourced from the top layer of the cowhide so the leather’s natural grain is retained. Furthermore, full-grain leather comes from the same cowhide.
Unlike “genuine leather” (which is as authentic as plastic surgery), premium-full grain leather lasts the longest and looks the best, aging alongside you with a robust patina that individuates with use. Genuine leather is made from multiple different types of leather, often scraps that are sewn together and painted over to imitate full-grain leather. Andar only uses full-grain leather.
The Atlas is made from full-grain leather, which means that through all of your travels it will travel with you. It will come into its own as it ages through your constant use, resisting the attacks of time. Most passport wallets look as big as picture frames with multiple zippers, but the Andar, despite its prodigious storage, retains that sleek and slim look that makes it extremely easy to grab on the go and barely notice it comfortably sitting in your pocket.
2. Thought Your Headphones Couldn’t Get Any Better? Think Again: The Capsule
It seems like Apple Airpods are on everyone’s EDC list nowadays. Airpods are essential, but with the enhancement of The Capsule, they truly become an item we want to show off and carry with us every day.
Protecting our expensive items is important, so we designed The Capsule, a protective leather case for your AirPods. It’s made of durable plastic and oil waxed full-grain leather, which is also used on military gear to protect against the elements. With these full-grain leather AirPod cases, your headphones are protected from everyday life (spills, falls, etc.).
With The Capsule, Airpods become a truly unique piece and set you apart from every other person who owns them.
3. Royal Simplicity: The Duke
As far as EDC’s go, The Duke is the paramount incarnation of what it means to want to take something with you wherever you go. As the future calls us away from hard currency like cash and coins, to cards and touchless payments, The Duke is the perfect way to step into the future. The Duke is so light and elegant that you’ll barely notice it’s in your pocket. Its regal simplicity doesn’t at all negate its rugged durability.
You can fit the majority of your cards in the center slot, and your most frequently used card can chill in the front pocket where it’s easily accessible. We added a cash strap to hold any extra cash you have on you, or another card should you need. As another tribute to the future, we’ve outfitted The Duke with RFID-blocking materials to protect you from the danger of personal and financial information theft.
What Is RFID?
RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification. RFID is one of the most up-to-date ways to safely store data and personal information. Everything from your credit cards to key fobs for your new car uses RFID to communicate. In not so many words, RFID uses radio waves to identify people or objects.
RFID information can be tapped into if one has the right technology and the wrong motives, so RFID Blocking prevents your credit information from being skimmed while you’re out buying groceries. The way RFID Blocking works is by sewing a thick and flexible piece of metal into the frame of our wallets, one that is hardly noticed, but blocks thieves from accessing the data available on your employee badge, credit cards, or other sensitive items.
The metal we use is stainless steel and acts as a shield against any thief who wants to skim your data and steal your identity. What’s great is that these wallets look identical to a normal wallet. You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between The Duke and any other credit cardholder. But the Duke lets you worry about one less thing with its RFID Blocking capability.
4. True Minimalism: The Finn
As we mentioned before, at Andar we’ve cultivated minimalism as one of our highest virtues along with resilience and exemplary quality. The Finn is one of our favorites; it embodies everything we believe minimalism has to offer our lives. It is, in one sense, nothing. Which is exactly what we wanted, the perfect amount of resistance to addition and supplementation.
Made from our premium full-grain leather, The Finn is an example that sacrificing quantity isn’t sacrificing quality. Quite deceptively, The Finn can hold 1-8+ cards because of its 4 card slots, and 1 center through-pocket that can hold more cards or folded cash. We added an elastic pull tab to access your cards with utmost ease. Not only this, but we wanted The Finn to come in four different options to suit whatever your tastes are.
First, The Finn comes in Olive Gray, a luxurious and cool option that connotes thoughtfulness and precision. Next, it comes in a slate Black which reminds us of the comfort that the dark sometimes supplies. Thirdly, our Dark Brown Finn provides the classic muted brown leather look that fits anything in your wardrobe and elevates any color that stands alongside it. And lastly, we offer our Tan option, a light Finn that lights up everything around it and perfectly complements our other Andar leather products like The Capsule.
5. No Need For Glitz: The iPhone Fitz Case
Now we come to The Fitz, one of our favorite designs. We are constantly frustrated with the modern state of iPhone cases. We designed a full-grain oil waxed leather case for your iPhone, made from the same premium high-quality leather we make our wallets from, that doubles as a cardholder and is perfect for pairing with one of our minimalist wallets like The Finn. We wanted to make a leather iPhone case that not only enhances your iPhone’s look but protects it as well.
Because it’s made from our full-grain top-quality leather and is constantly in your hands, the leather’s natural patina ages beautifully and tells its own story. It will be like no one else’s in the entire world.
We made it for almost every iPhone imaginable, so no matter what model you have, even if it’s a few years old, you’ll be able to find The Fitz for your iPhone. We additionally lined it with soft microfiber lining to protect your phone from scratches and made sure that it retained its slim and sleek functionality.
Some iPhone cases add bulk; we made one that is not only slim and minimalistic but also takes away the bulk of your cards that you could put somewhere else. The Fitz is a must-have EDC item that you won’t want to leave the house without. Protect and enhance your iPhone.
6. Protecting Your Andar Leather Products: Leather Cream
For Everyday Carries, we know that to last a long time they need to be taken care of properly. We didn’t want to leave you in the dark to take care of your new full-grain leather product, so we designed our Andar Leather Cream, made from all-natural ingredients including triple-filtered beeswax, blended seed oils, and naturally occurring lipids.
We apply it to all our wallets before they leave our warehouse to ensure they remain in prime condition. We worked hard to design a leather cream that restores, waterproofs and protects your leather. And now you can ensure that your leather will weather the storm.
Compiling Your New EDC List
So there you have it; a beginner’s list for their new EDC collection. You now know what to look into for your traveling wallet, your minimalist wallet, your headphones, your iPhone case, and your cardholder.
Each is an item you can grab on your way out of the door and carry with you for the years to come. Andar products are meant to be incorporated into your life, involved in your everyday activities, and allowed to develop their own stories alongside you. Each of these products is truly intended to be carried every single day, and you can be proud that you’ve decided to invest in something that will break through the days with you.
Sources:
What is Full-Grain Leather? (with pictures) | Info Bloom
What Is Minimalism? A Practical Guide to a Minimalist Lifestyle | Break The Twitch
