ScottEVest vs. Baubax: Smugglerwear

Pardon the bathroom selfie, but I’m traveling alone and it felt less weird to snap this than it did to ask a random person to take a picture of my travel vest. (Side note: I’m traveling alone! This is bliss! I think airports should just sell tickets to moms who don’t even need to leave town but just want to enjoy the sensation of how not stressful it is to travel without kids. You don’t know this until you’ve traveled with them first. You can’t just skip ahead to realizing kid-free travel is actually very easy. You have to be starving to death before you can truly appreciate just how wonderful a bowl of bland soup can taste.)

This is what I look like when I travel.

This is also my first trial of my new ScottEVest, and I am giving it two thumbs up. I have a Baubax travel hoodie as well, and I also love that, but I realized on our trip to Hawaii that the cozy hoodie was way too cozy for warm climates. I’d known I wouldn’t need it in Hawaii, but I’d figured it would still come in handy on the plane. Sometimes it feels like you’re traveling in a refrigerator. Not so, it turns out. Getting to the airport in Denver, then on the first plane, then through the San Jose airport and onto the last plane…I was sweating non-stop. I found my lovely cozy hoodie with all the many pockets to be a burden more than a help. Don’t get me wrong, I will use the hell out of it during Colorado winters and travels to/from colder climates. But I realized that for our Big Trip we’ve aimed all along to avoid cold weather. We’ll be following the summer across the hemispheres. So the lovely Baubax was bumped off my packing list for that. It was back to online research/obsessing over similar travel gear.

Enter ScottEVest. I’d looked into it before, and it seemed great but I kept looking at the women’s designs and feeling meh about each of them. Not enough pockets or not the right kinds of pockets. Or this one is great but doesn’t have a hood. This one has a hood but isn’t water-resistant. And so on.

I finally emailed the customer service people and just asked for help. The nicest guy ever replied quickly and answered all my questions. He suggested a couple of the men’s jackets that are also fine for women and would cover most or all of my needs for a jacket. (For now I’ll overlook the annoying fact that the women’s clothing industry is a bunch of sexist bullshit, but don’t think I’m not aware of it, designers!)

I ordered a couple of them with the intention of keeping just one. It ended up being no contest: the Tropiformer is pretty damn close to perfect for what I wanted. They have their own website, so just click here to read all the details. I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. I’ll just say that my favorite part of it is the removable sleeve section (like a weird little bolero jacket shape) because it attaches with magnets! None of those annoying zippers that you have to line up just right, and you inevitably attach it to the wrong side on the first try. This is truly easy-on, easy-off. I’m writing this at the baggage claim after my flight, and I can tell you that mid-flight I removed and replaced the sleeves three times. It was so easy! The vest part stayed on the whole time!

And of course the pockets are full of all sorts of goodies - a collapsible water bottle, kindle, tissues, wipes, lip balm, IDs, credit cards, money, phone and portable charger, and I don’t even remember what else. My purse. That’s what it’s filled with - my purse crap, all of which comes in handy all the time. I didn’t even bring a purse on this trip! Amazing. (I will have to get used to the lighter feeling, because I definitely keep thinking I’ve forgotten something.)

The Tropiformer is pretty lightweight so I don’t expect this to work when it’s really cold, but I can layer up if it’s a little chilly. And even with a ton of stuff in it, it doesn’t look ridiculous. I’m not usually a vest kind of person, but I could wear this around and not feel too weird.

Oh! And other best part? I wasn’t sure what to put in this clear pocket, and then I came across just the thing that I had accidentally brought along…