Claudia Chisholm was representing the luggage company she inherited from her father at a 2008 hunting and outdoors trade show when the business took a turn she never saw coming.
Customers kept strolling in, looking at the high-end briefcases and leather goods, including wallets and bags ‘with embroidered critters’ she’d expected to be a surefire hit at an event filled with hunters.
‘Nobody bought a thing,’ she laughs. ‘But we had so many people ask [us] to do conceal carry handbags.’
The child of two Holocaust survivors, Chisholm was raised with no knowledge of firearms – but she was ‘overwhelmed’ by request after request from women who wanted purses for their guns.
‘We walked away with about 200 enquiries,’ she tells the Daily Mail, adding: ‘Back in that time, there was nothing for women in this particular industry.’
Chisholm dove headfirst into it with a handbag line called Gun Tote’n Mamas (GTM Originals), named for a joke she and her Chicago-based team shared after the trade show. When she entered the industry, there weren’t even products available for ‘both left- and right-handed [female customers], for God’s sake.’
She’s watched, though, as options for female firearm carriers have leapt from bags and holsters to everyday staples like leggings and sexy pieces like corsets.
‘What’s happening is, conceal carry accessories used to be kind of a novelty,’ Joelle Orem, who runs an Indiana-based business making firearm-adapted jeans, tells the Daily Mail.
Conceal carry purses such as the above handbag from Gun Tote’n Mamas are examples of products cropping up to meet demand from women carrying guns at all times
Industry insiders say manufacturers previously had a ‘shrink it and pink it’ mentality but now build conceal carry products specifically for women from scratch, mirroring mainstream fashions and catering to a growing customer base
Jen O’Hara, co-founder of Girls with Guns Clothing (GWG), noted how ‘there are so many more options out there than there were in 2008, when we very first started’
‘In the past, we’ve had … maybe the gun manufacturers tell us what they think we want and need. But I think what’s up and coming is you have actual … influencers, women, who are out living the lifestyle, and they’re creating their own products to fit that lifestyle.’
Around 26.2 million people bought their first firearm between January 2020 through December 2024, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF).
The number of women gun owners has skyrocketed in recent years; a study by Northeastern University found that half of the 5.4 million new gun owners from January 2020 to April 2021 were female.
The largest increase occurred in 2020 when 8.4 million Americans armed themselves – with 40 percent of purchasers citing pandemic uncertainty and social unrest in the US as their reasoning.
In 2024, women made up 29.1 per cent of permit holders in the 14 states that provide data by gender, according to a report published last year by the Crime Prevention Research Center. Seven states had data from 2012 to 2023/2024, and permit numbers grew 111.9 per cent faster for women than for men.
There are also 29 states that have adopted some form of permitless carry, or Constitutional Carry, meaning the real number of women conceal carriers is likely far higher.
Costume designer Darlene Wallster created a corset and even garter belt for firearms after learning to shoot and realizing ‘the concealed carry holsters were giving me bruises… So I thought: I’m going to come up with something better than this … and try to make it feminine’
Claudia Chisholm, 69, knew nothing about guns when she represented the luggage and leather company she took over from her father at a 2008 shooting and outdoors trade show – but she was ‘overwhelmed’ by requests for conceal carry purses and began GTM Originals
And that reality is crossing over into women’s retail – with an explosion of companies and entrepreneurs cropping up to cater to the growing market.
Around the same time as Chisholm was learning about firearms and safety for her conceal carry handbags, a costumer designer was learning how to shoot a few states away in Nevada – at the urging of her then-husband, ‘one of those survivalist dudes,’ says Darlene Wallster.
‘All the concealed carry holsters were giving me bruises,’ she tells the Daily Mail. ‘So I thought: I’m going to come up with something better than this … and try to make it feminine.’
She launched Can Can Concealment in 2013, eventually branching out from holsters to conceal carry corsets, garters and other apparel; by 2020, she says, so many offshore manufacturers had started copying her that she had to shut down the company.
O’Hara, showing off a GWG design, is also a firearms instructor and teaches women conceal carry basics such as ‘how to go to the bathroom with leggings so you don’t drop your gun’
Wallster developed ‘a garter so that women wearing dresses and skirts, real estate agents, teachers, safety patrol at church, those women could have a gun on the inside of their thigh that nobody could see unless they needed it’
Jen O’Hara, who lives on 18 acres in Northern California, was another early pioneer benefiting from the explosion in popularity.
‘There wasn’t a plan for us to do this full-time or ever even get paid,’ O’Hara, who co-founded Girls With Guns Clothing (GWG) with her friend and future sister-in-law, Norissa Harman, in 2010. They began with casual clothing for female hunters before branching into rangewear and, just a few years ago, conceal carry everyday apparel – such leggings.
Their diversification, mother-of-two O’Hara says, stemmed from a combination of identifying untapped markets and following trends.
‘Now everybody has jumped on that trend,’ she tells Daily Mail. ‘There are so many more options out there than there were in 2008, when we very first started bringing the company together.’
It’s a phenomenon that hasn’t really ever been seen before, says fashion historian Sonya Abrego.
‘I’m looking at these leggings and stuff; it’s very mainstreamized,’ she says. ‘These aren’t avant-garde on-trend fashions … these are very typical Midwestern mom fashions.’
An expert in Westernwear history and fashion, she says that nothing like this existed even back in frontier days.
‘It was a gun belt, okay?’ she says. ‘You could have something built to your size and specifications; you could have something built according to your style.’
But such large-scale production and variation in choice is a recent development – reflecting the number of women who feel the need to carry weapons at all times.
Retired teacher Diana West, pictured with her husband, began her Lady Conceal line of handbags after attempting to sell purses at her husband’s feed and tack store – only to field repeated requests for customized conceal carry bags for women
Demonstrating one of her conceal carry bags, West says she’s noticed a marked increase in women gun owners and customers over the years, attributing it to ‘the fear factor … People just want to feel safe, and women want to protect their children’
Natalie Strong, 39, began a conceal-carry fashion-focused blog and boutique after getting her own permit around 2017, the first time she found herself living alone.
‘I really just wanted to be able to ask a girlfriend’ how to carry stylishly, she tells the Daily Mail – but next to nothing existed online at the time addressing such a niche audience.
So she began Elegant & Armed, offering tips and products as she watched the industry start to wake up from a ‘shrink it and pink it’ mentality.
‘They were taking products that were not necessarily great quality and just making it pink and saying, “A woman will like this,”‘ Strong says. ‘There has definitely been more of a shift to companies designing products from scratch, specifically with women in mind.’
‘I couldn’t even tell you how many outfits and different ways that I carry, because it’s just like the functionality of: How am I going to accessorize my firearm?’ says O’Hara, 45, who’d worked in real estate before GWG. ‘Because I don’t leave home with out it. So it just kind of became a lifestyle.’
A firearms instructor, as well, she teaches women conceal carry basics such as ‘how to go to the bathroom with leggings so you don’t drop your gun.’
Wallster developed ‘a garter so that women wearing dresses and skirts, real estate agents, teachers, safety patrol at church, those women could have a gun on the inside of their thigh that nobody could see unless they needed it.’
In Ohio, Natalie Strong developed products as solutions to problems she was encountering herself.
‘I like to dress business casual and wear blouses,’ she says. ‘Time and time again, when I stepped outside, just even a little bit of wind would blow that flimsy blouse material over my firearm and show the outline of it through my blouse.
‘So that’s why I developed a concealment camisole – it has panels on the underside, and it’s made of thick satin, so even if the wind pushes against you, it will shield … for women who carry in the small of their back, sometimes, if you bend over to get something like a purse or a child, your shirt will then tuck behind the gun when you stand back up. The camisole is designed to slide right back over.’
Natalie Strong, of Ohio, began a blog and boutique called Elegant & Armed after obtaining a conceal carry permit and struggling to incorporate her firearm for protection into her fashion; she models a pair of Dark Alley Denim jeans, adapted by another entrepreneur, Joelle Orem
Joelle Orem, who ‘married into’ farm life in Indiana, began modifying her own jeans after her husband gave her a gun as a 2017 Christmas present – a gift she admits she was initially ‘afraid of.’
‘I had basically cut up my jeans and tried to figure out a way to integrate a holster into my own jeans that I knew I liked already – and that quickly turned into, “Well, maybe if I move the pocket over here, it works a little better.”‘
After she’d mastered adapting her own denim, it occurred to her that other women might also want conceal-carry jeans; she began an Etsy shop and was so bolstered by the response that she found a manufacturer in Arizona and debuted her first ‘batch’ for Dark Alley Denim Co. at the 2019 NRA show in Indianapolis.
The driving motivation these fashion entrepreneurs hear from all of their customers is desire for protection, they say.
‘We also sell accessory pouches where you put a taser in there or pepper spray,’ says Diana West, who owns Colorado-based Lady Conceal, selling handbags and related conceal carry products. ‘It does not have to be a firearm.’
A retired teacher, she’d tried selling purses out of her husband’s feed and tack store only to repeatedly field questions about conceal carry handbags. So she decided to stock them, then design and sell her own.
‘I think a lot of it is the fear factor,’ says West, 67. ‘People just want to feel safe, and women want to protect their children … all those factors come into play.
‘It’s very popular now … it’s just a growing trend. I have a lot more competition these days.’
O’Hara, now married to her co-founder’s brother, says that she ‘carried my firearm maybe five to six times out of 10 times pre-children and pre-Covid, pre all the things that have changed.
‘And I feel like we live in a little bit of a different America.’
That difference has translated to dollar signs and demand, undeniably – with Chisholm of the belief that major outdoors retail chains could profit from entire sections dedicated to women’s conceal carry.
She’s seen not only huge increases in women clamoring for such products but also changes in the demographics.
‘We’re seeing even the Gen Zs coming in,’ she tells the Daily Mail. ‘They’re coming in highly educated. They’ve done their homework. They’ve done their research.’
Standing just 4’8 and 69 years old, Chisholm became a gun owner herself as she threw herself into the industry. She expects the financial world of female financial fashion to only continue to grow, mirroring social and commercial trends.
‘Many of the retailers are still not quite on board and understand how women can carry their business through ups and downs of the industry,’ she says. ‘But the companies that do, they have been doing extremely well – and they understand that they need more.
‘Women want more … the last statistic I gave at a talk was like 83 per cent of all retails sales are done by women. Now, as a retailer, you should be paying attention to those statistics.
‘The trend is still very much an upward trajectory,’ she says. ‘It is not going away.’
