Style tips; packing guide: What to wear for a Kenyan safari in 2025

Khaleej Times

08-08-2025

It's Leo szn, as the kids would say (I have more confidence in the future of fashion than I do in the future of vowels). And not just astrologically. I've got big cats in my sights as I head off on holiday to Kenya with my family this week. August marks the Great Migration, when millions of wildebeest and zebras journey through East Africa, so the UAE's airports are primed to usher visitors heading to witness the largest mammal migration on Earth. Matthew Vlemmiks, travel leisure manager at Dnata, says, 'We've observed a strong uptick in interest for premium safari escapes – particularly among the Emirati community – seeking immersive stays at renowned reserves.'
It's our first time on safari and, naturally, I am approaching packing with all the zeal of The White Lotus costume design department, should season four of the hit TV show head to the Maasai Mara. If I had Netflix's budget, I'd be trawling vintage sites for original Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, Michael Kors and Yves Saint Laurent. However, with a 1968 gaberdine safari suit by the latter now selling for over Dh100,000, I'll be mainly sticking to 2025 Zara 'originals'. Indeed, type 'safari' into the Zara online search bar and you'll be rewarded with a glut of lightweight and linen-blend shirts, suits and separates, each approximately 0.2 per cent of the price of 60-year-old Yves Saint Laurent. Typified by multiple pockets, belted waists, long lengths (to combat mosquitoes), and in a cream-to-khaki colour palette, safari style is – fortuitously for me – a mainstay of this summer's retail offering.
The ultimate safari icon is Meryl Streep in the 1985 film adaptation of Karen Blixen's memoir Out of Africa. Streep's nipped-in safari jackets, pith helmet, floor-length A-line riding skirts and the occasional tie are, I imagine, a bit last century for a 2025 safari. The film is set in the early 1900s, after all. However, Streep's Oscar-nominated wardrobe of linen, cotton and drill fabrics, in white, khaki and brown, is very much my lodestar (even if Zara's offerings lean more to polyester). While Streep's knee-high leather riding boots in the movie are very much my jam, we'll be flying between camps on small Cessna Caravan planes with a strict 15kg luggage limit, so sadly they won't make the cut. One thing that packing for a 16-night holiday with a 15kg weight threshold does is focus the mind. Everything in my case has to earn its place in the hold of a tiny aircraft. And not just my case; the bigger mission is coaxing my 12-, 10- and eight-year-old kids out of their preferred wardrobe of football kits. The Oasis Live 25 Tour might have reignited terrace style this summer, but my 10-year-old son's rotation of Chelsea shirts is the bane of my aesthetic existence. Could football strip designers not read GQ once in a while? Although, I'll concede that Spain's away kit for the women's UEFA Euros is quite lovely. But I digress. The kids won't be repping Cole Palmer on the Maasai Mara this summer because I have stocked up on Abercrombie Kids' lightweight pull-on combat trousers in grey and beige. Non-obnoxiously neutral and just preppy enough, Abercrombie Kids' fusion of sportwear fabrics in classic Americana styling is a more practical, and budget-friendly, way of channelling classic Ralph Lauren safari style for pre-teens.
My one concession to frivolity (and about 100 grams of those 15kgs)? A Roberto Cavalli x Skims tiger-print swimsuit. As both kids and David Attenborough would say: it ate.