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Maria Adelmann is a writer covering travel. She once left on a six-week trip and didn't come back for three years. hand making
The garment duffle—a convertible garment bag that zips up to create a duffle bag—has haunted my social media feed for months.
The People of the Internet say it transforms how they travel. Not only does the bag appear to do some Mary Poppins–level packing, but it also purports to solve an age-old problem: Traveling with a garment bag sucks. If you take a garment bag on a plane, you have to manage it at the airport only to stuff it in the overhead. Plus, it counts as your carry-on, so you’re basically out a whole suitcase.
But if there’s one thing I’m more wary of than a craze, it’s a two-in-one. It’s the spork problem: mediocre spoon, mediocre fork. But in some rare cases, a two-in-one works. If you’ve ever watched Transformers or put a Bagel Bite in a toaster oven, you know what I mean.
The more people I watched zipping their garment bags magically into duffles, the more I had to know: Is a garment duffle a toaster oven, or is it a spork?
While garment duffles from Amazon pseudo-brands abound, ground zero for the obsession seems to be the Halfday Garment Duffel. (Though the bag doesn’t appear to be Halfday’s invention: A patent for the design was filed by Travelon in 2005, long before Halfday made its entrance.)
I decided to try Halfday’s original duffle, the Garment Duffel 45L, which currently costs a little under $110 and comes in a plethora of dark and neutral colors. Before opening the box, I had two conflicting expectations: One, based on Halfday’s weekend-in-the-Hamptons marketing vibes, was that the bag would be smart, sophisticated, and high-end. The other, based on the incessant influencer oversell and relatively moderate price, was that it would be cheap and gimmicky.
Neither held completely true. The stitching was clean, the chunky outer zippers pulled with ease (essential on a bag with this much zipper), and the three loops on the garment bag (two for hangers and one for hanging the bag itself) felt sturdy. It included a few thoughtful details, such as a trolley sleeve, interior elasticized slip pockets for shoes, an exterior zippered pocket, and a tie-down strap in the garment bag. Many of these features look flimsier—or are nonexistent—on the Amazon dupes.
But the bag doesn’t feel high-end, either. The polyester fabric looks … fine, and the hardware is plastic instead of metal, which is likely to be a durability issue over the long term. I compared the Halfway Garment Duffel with my personal weekender duffle from Away. And I found that the Away bag had more organizational features and was made of higher-end materials (canvas, leather, and metal). But you pay a price for all that sophistication: Away’s Weekender costs—and weighs—twice as much as Halfday’s Garment Duffel.
Halfday now offers a premium version of the Garment Duffel for about $50 more. It’s made with sturdier fabric (ballistic nylon) and metal hardware, and it has additional organizational pockets.
The original Halfday Garment Duffel is enjoyable to pack. Not only does it have a roomy, 45-liter capacity (larger than that of some rolling carry-ons), but its long zipper and wide mouth also give you a cross-section view of the interior of the duffle, so packing efficiently is very easy.
I found that while the sides collapsed when the bag was zipped open for packing, I could quickly resolve the issue by putting shoes in the interior side pockets. I had no problem fitting three days’ worth of clothes, even without packing cubes.
As much as I enjoyed packing the Halfday Garment Duffel, I did not enjoy carrying it. I don’t use duffles as carry-ons, since I find them unwieldy, heavy, and a shoulder killer. (This may be one reason Halfday now offers a smaller, 40-liter version of the bag .) I personally wouldn’t use this bag in the car, either, since I could just hang a garment bag there.
That said, some people love a duffle, citing the ability to zip through the airport with ease and to shove it in the overhead, no matter what space remains (whether you want to do this with a duffle that doubles as a garment bag is up to you).
Even if you prefer a duffle, you still have to contend with this bag’s particular quirk: You must unpack it completely to extract the clothes from the garment bag, something you should do ASAP to reduce wrinkles. This isn’t an issue if you like unpacking into your room’s drawers (though the bedbug-traumatized would never).
Storing the Halfday Garment Duffel while you’re not using it is a dream. Because it unzips completely, it packs totally flat, so it takes up little space and fits almost anywhere.
In addition to packing the duffle itself, I packed the garment bag with two items on hangers: a men’s easy-iron, cotton-polyester button-down in medium and an oversize linen blazer (linen is notorious for wrinkles). Fitting them into the duffle required laying the sleeves over the garments. I opted not to test a dress because all of mine—even my above-the-knee dresses (I’m 5-foot-7)—were too long to fit in the bag without my folding them over at the bottom.
I kept the bag fully packed for eight hours. When I unpacked it, the shirt had a few wrinkles but was relatively unscathed. The linen blazer, however, was deeply wrinkled. I wasn’t impressed. My clothes fare at least as well when they’re gently folded and placed at the top of my suitcase, where they aren’t pressed under so much weight. If I have to fire up a steamer or iron regardless, why bother?
Still, I knew that other people liked the duffle, garment bag and all. Caroline Mullen, a Wirecutter staff writer covering home and organization, calls it a “lifesaver for interstate wedding travel.”
“My fiancé and I kept finding that it was totally annoying to haul a garment bag through the airport (only to shove it in the overhead anyway), and it would be easier to invest in a duffle that accommodates clothing on hangers and functions like a regular carry-on,” she told me. “Now we can minimize wrinkles on suits and dresses, and also have space for shoes, toiletries, and other clothes as well.”
Hauling it through the airport is no problem, either. Since Caroline travels with her partner, they can roll it on top of their second carry-on. This bag does indeed solve the problem of what to do with all your other stuff when a garment bag counts as your carry-on.
People often carry suits in garment bags because suits can be particularly persnickety—it takes care to press them, and they can be ruined by steam. So he best-case scenario is to simply keep them unwrinkled.
Alexander Aciman, a Wirecutter editor and fabric aficionado, has a beef with the very premise of the garment duffle. “If you listed all the ways to pack a suit, putting it at the bottom of a duffle bag and turning it into a bag liner is probably the last thing I’d recommend,” he told me. “Be kind to your clothes. Using your nice suit as a cushion for 20 pounds of clothes and shoes is not the best way to transport your most important garment.”
When Alexander travels with a suit for a quick weekend trip, he folds it carefully in his carry-on, though doing so admittedly takes up a lot of space. Otherwise, he uses a dedicated garment bag. When he boards the plane, he asks if the bag can be hung, or he gently folds it and places it on top of a hard-sided carry-on in the overhead.
Another option is to use a suitcase with a well-designed garment folder, like the one in the lid of the Briggs & Riley Baseline Carry-On (Wirecutter’s upgraded suitcase pick). It’s also smart to avoid traveling with clothes made of wrinkle-prone fabric, such as linen or wool.
Thanks to the Halfday Garment Duffel’s long zipper, it’s surprisingly functional as a duffle bag. It’s enjoyable to pack and can store flat.
But I personally wouldn’t use the duffle. I’m not sold on the garment bag feature, particularly for more finicky clothes such as suits. Since the garment bag creates the structure of the duffle, you end up putting a lot of weight on the very clothes you want to protect. As a result, some wrinkles are inevitable, and I don’t like that I have to totally unpack the bag to extract the garments.
Although the duffle seems decent for its price, it’s unexceptional. And durability could be an issue over the long haul. If you like the design regardless of the pitfalls and would use such a bag often, it could be smart to invest in a higher-end version (Halfday’s Premium Garment Duffel may fit the bill, though I haven’t tried it yet).
The garment duffle might be ideal for a couple during “the wedding years” (you know, the onslaught of weddings that happen all at once in your 20s or 30s). My colleague Caroline is in exactly this situation, and she loves her garment duffle. For her and her partner, traveling with a garment duffle feels less unwieldy than with a garment bag, especially since they can roll it atop a carry-on at the airport. They have no issue with the garment bag becoming the structure of the duffle, nor do they expect the clothes to arrive completely wrinkle-free.
What’s more, wedding travel is limited over a person’s lifetime. In this case, the duffle’s cheaper materials could be a bonus: The bag is physically light and relatively inexpensive, made to last exactly as long as it needs to.
This article was edited by Hannah Rimm and Maxine Builder.
I’m a writer on the discovery team covering travel products, along with related news, fun facts, and tips.
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