No question, Hender Scheme make some achingly cool things. This is one of them. A neat looking nylon tulip shaped hat. The drawstring ‘accent’ (as such things are frequently titled) speaks to both the aesthetic and the practical, offering pleasing contrast and adjustable fit. All well and good.

Other than it’s also a bag. A small, sort of useless, free-with-a-gallon-of-petrol type bag. I have no idea why this bothers me so much.

I first saw this hatbag in the following picture.

I assumed (not unreasonably) it was a hat, that came in a bag. Turns out it’s a hat, that’s also a bag. It looks like this.

Or (the slightly more vibey) this.

I mean… I guess. It just makes me think that in menswear’s ceaseless plod towards ever more marketable utility, can we sometimes be blind to the actual (rather than imagined) use case? There’s no harm in a hat turning into a bag, it’s just that numerous IRL scenarios expose it as an idea that should have stayed on the moodboard.

You’ve got your keys, phone, lighter, chuddy and optimistic prophylactic in the bag, it starts to rain. What do you do? Expose your essentials to the downpour in favour of protecting your barnet?

It’s a boiling day at the festival, you want to buy a magic crystal from a soothsayer, you’ve only got a 50, he’s run out of notes, suddenly you’ve got a nylon sock full of coppers swinging from your belt and your forehead’s going nuclear in the sun.

Dunno about you, but this kind of shit happens to me all the time.

Just ignore me. It’s a smart item  — I’d go for the olive colourway myself. Even the price isn’t all that bad; £113 from Digital Mountain. Although, I suppose once you add postage, proxy service and import duty onto that, you’ll probably be looking at more like a twoer. Which, if you think about it, is about enough to (and stick with me here I’m going radical) buy a hat and a bag.