I’ve been searching for a DOPP Kit which would be sized correctly for how I travel, while also looking sharp and being aesthetically pleasing. There’s a lot of DOPP Kits out there, but this Full Disclosure Dopp kept drawing me back to it. The size seemed right, and all of the materials looked nice.
I was about to buy one in classic leather, until I realized that this would spend most of the time around water and soap, and leather doesn’t seem like the right choice of material for that type of use. So instead I opted for the Vegan leather alternative, and there’s no going back — this is a fantastic DOPP Kit.
Materials & Size
The sizing on this is spot on, at 8.5” x 3” h 2” — it fits all my standard carry items. The only times I have needed additional space is when I travel for longer than 7 days. Generally, I can fit everything I need in this, minus my electric razor.
The case itself is split in half with a zipper which wraps all the way around, and allows you to split the case open to get at either side. There’s a large flap you can tuck under one side, to help keep things tidy. The lining is an easy care wipe clean, but feels very premium. This kit also tucks nicely in my luggage.
The vegan leather is described by Hardgraft best:
We have sourced and developed a material that has the look and feel of leather so we can continue designing in our field of expertise. It’s an organic leather alternative made from renewable plant-based biomass. This means it regenerates on a human time scale and does not jeopardise the natural resources of future generations. It’s made sustainably by a leading Italian manufacturer with the highest credentials in terms of environmentally conscious standards.
Embossed with the renowned Saffiano cross-hatch pattern, our vegan alternative leather is hard to distinguish from the real thing.
It’s a really nice material, but firmer and more rigid than any other leather product I’ve handled from Hardgraft. It doesn’t have an outward plastic feel, but I don’t know that I am going to fool someone into thinking this is leather. And I don’t think you need to either, it’s a fantastic material all on its own. In a lot of ways, it’s the perfect mix of style, with practical performance. And it has spent half a day in small puddles of water and soap in hotels before, and still wipes clean. I’m a big fan of this material for this use.
Using It
I’ve used this on two trips, and then I additionally used this for an extended (12 days) period when we moved. I’ve put a lot of use on this already, and I really like it. There are a couple of quirks with it.
There’s two main quirks:
- Your items don’t fit if they are not travel sized. I’ve had no issues with anything travel sized fitting in mine, but anything not sized for travel has been a struggle to fit.
- In the images and description Hardgraft shows that this should fold back on itself to present two little buckets of gear, I have no doubt the other variants do this, but the vegan leather offers enough rigidity that it won’t do this unless you really try and balance it just so. Which is a bummer overall.
Now, the good bits:
- It holds a lot more than I expected because you can easily utilize the full capacity of the kit. When you zip it together, the back edges tend to fill out.
- It looks fantastic, and I really love looking at it on the counter when I travel, handling it in and out of my bags, and even when it’s in my bags it looks great.
- I have no regrets about the vegan leather selection I made. It’s the perfect material for this use. I don’t worry about it getting scratched and scuffed when shoved it into my duffle, nor do I worry about it getting dirty or water logged when living in a hotel bathroom.
- The flap divider is a clever solution with essentially no downsides.
It would be really nice for me if it stayed open when clamshelled, and initially I thought that would kill this for me. However, that’s not actually how I use my DOPP Kits, so it turns out to not be an issue. I generally get what I want/need, use that, put it back, and stash the kit away. Usually because I am sharing the limited counter space with my wife, and thus want to stay out of the way — but also I don’t want housekeeping to need to move my stuff.
By splitting the case like they did, Hardgraft created a DOPP where everything is much easier to get to. One side is my daily items, and the other is generally my lotions, soaps, etc — keeping the two halves divided means I can easily move to an area where something I want is. And it makes it easier to not disrupt the entire bag. In other words, there’s a lot less blindly digging around with this bag, instead you can generally see everything at a glance.
(On that note, the Matador Flatpak things work great in this.)
Overall
I like it, but it’s a touch quirky and thus I think this is something you’ll either really like or really dislike. For me it strikes a nice balance between a completely unorganized classic hole of a DOPP Kit, and something with far too much structure and slots in it. This gives me a way to have a little structure, while still holding items which don’t fit the generic slots in the DOPP.
I am not sure I’d like this in the other materials, but I am quite happy with the vegan material I have.
Buy here. (Vegan seems out of stock, but keep an eye out here:Vegan line.)