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The Experience
I have a confession to make: I own a SCOTTeVEST travel vest. And I am not a vest guy.
Why I resisted. My earliest vest memories are my parents putting me in a three-piece suit for church and school functions, where I’d stand on stage and sing, in Florida, and occasionally faint. Everyone said I was locking my knees. I say they were wrapping me up like a sardine. Later, work gave me a vest as a gift, a nice thought, except I lived in Palm Coast, Florida, where you need cold-weather gear a few weeks a year, and during those weeks I prefer sleeves.
Why I caved. The ads got me. I remembered the day I switched from lace-up shoes to slip-ons at airport security and thought it was revolutionary. The vest ad showed a guy tossing his whole jacket in the bin and walking on through, and that stuck with me. Eventually they wore me down and I bought one. Then I tried it on, hated how it looked, and put it in the closet.
Learning to use it. The vest has about 24 pockets, pockets on top of pockets, and early on I’d put something in and then couldn’t find the zipper to get it back out. That was annoying as hell. But I kept at it, and eventually everything got a home: passport here, wallet there, phone one, phone two, spare glasses, a spare ball cap, a power bank, pens and travel documents. My kids used to tease me about my little moments of panic patting my pockets for something that was always there. Now I know where everything is.
The vest: the one I have is SCOTTeVEST’s Best Travel Vest, which cost about $200. That’s not cheap for a vest, which is part of why it took me so long to buy one.
The first test. I tried it domestically first. Walking into the terminal at Denver International (DIA), I was razzing myself the whole way: you look ridiculous. Then I went through security and thought, oh, that was kind of nice. It was the slip-on shoes all over again.
The one downside. The only bad experience was having to walk several miles in it. It’s built to carry weight, and even big terminals are no problem, but for a long walk I wouldn’t recommend it.
The verdict after a year. I’ve worn it in economy and in business class, and it keeps getting easier: grab the AirPods, grab this, grab that, and never wonder where I put something. I used to stuff everything in cargo pockets and never knew what I had. I might feel like a dork, but I’m giving it a much better review than I would have when I first bought it.
Want to know how it held up after another year and a dozen-plus international flights? Here’s the SCOTTeVEST update.