#498: Neckdam

Scarves don’t work. First, they get lost but even if you manage to hang onto yours, it remains a bulky, itchy thing knotted around your neck.

You can use a scarf to proclaim your allegiance to some seat of higher learning, but do you really want a warm neck enough to look like a perpetual undergraduate? My main concern though is that it’s really hard work to seal in the hot air trying to escape from your body through the gaps and folds of any conventional scarf.

Hannah_Boettcher_scarf1228.jpg

Today’s invention is a rectangular, neoprene envelope, with a circular hole in the middle, which fits over the head and then forms a seal with necks of almost any size. Inside the envelope, one edge of which can be velcro’d inside the back of any coat, is a series of air bladders which can be inflated by a small bellows (ideally, worn under one arm). This unit presses uniformly outwards against one’s coat and inwards against one’s neck. No air can escape and you stay correspondingly much warmer.

When the weather heats up, simply deflate the envelope, pull it over the head and stow it across the back of one’s shoulders, attached to the inside of the coat where it can’t go missing.

A similar arrangement might be developed for cuffs as well.

Comments are closed.