I like being prepared and usually carry with me everything I might need during the day. It means pockets full of sometimes exotic gear that may not get used for months but that I have to carry around nonetheless.

One of those fairly essential, yet seldom used items is a pair of sunglasses. Apart from when flying and fishing, I don’t use sunglasses very often as they interfere with taking pictures and I have a strong tendency to loose them if I take them off too often. Sometimes though, the sun is just too strong or I might fear for the safety of my eyes and feel better behind glasses. I have tried carrying a pair of modern Ray Bans in my pocket but found that the case was very thick, took a lot of room and didn’t prevent the glasses from being crushed at regular intervals. Eventually, I set out to look for the perfect pair of pocket glasses. A classical option were the folding ones developed by Porsche Design in the eighties, of which I already had a pair somewhere. Extracting it from its drawer I immediately saw that this beautiful, if slightly dated, design was too fragile for my purpose. Also, the glasses once opened were very flat and didn’t protect the eyes much.

Back to the internet and my question was finally answered by exactly the same people, who, not resting on their laurels, had continued perfecting the foldable glasses. The new model is extraordinary in its simplicity, folds perfectly flat but creates a wide wraparound pair of glasses when opened. The design might be a bit avant-garde for some but it has the exact functionality I was looking for. Protected in their completely flat case, the glasses disappear in your pocket but unfold into full size wraparounds when needed. The thin sheet of (probably) polycarbonate is perfect, optically speaking, and can be ordered in several shades of grey. I chose the most colour neutral one I could find.

I love this elegantly designed device and now carry it all the time with me but I must admit to a few drawbacks: the glasses are very expensive at more than £200 a pair, they are very difficult to find and, most importantly, they seem to scratch very easily, making them incompatible with full time use.