Here’s a traveling woe I faced while I was outside the country. Not knowing what the foreign country’s climate was like, I decided to take a stroll around the city, finally getting stuck in a downpour. Not knowing the language, I ended up having to walk back to my hotel. My clothes were suitably drenched (new shoes too) and my hotel room just left me with a hair-dryer. I spent the next three hours of my day watching reruns of Seinfeld while I blow-dried my clothes.

The thing is that you can wash clothes without a washing-machine. However, to effectively dry them, you need either the sun (not very reliable) and a clothes line (not very portable), or a drier/drier-service. An iron also helps, but irons aren’t great replacements for driers. The YOLO concept drier proposes something rather radical, but I can only hope that it materializes into a real product. Heck, I’d crowdfund it! The Yolo is a super-thin drier that collapses to be packed easily. However, when needed, one can open it out and use it to dry out, freshen up, and de-crease garments.

With barely the space footprint of a laptop, the dryer can be easily carried with luggage, effectively eliminating the need to carry ‘extra’ clothes for when the other ones are in the wash. Clothes can be easily hand-washed, and then dried out in the YOLO. And let’s just say I’m loving the name. Don’t spend three hours of your life blow-drying your clothes in a foreign country when you can have them dried in a portable drier. You only live once, don’t you?

Designers: SungIl Kim & Lee Eunbi.