Porter Tanker Helmet Bag (L)

The Tanker Helmet Bag (L) is a large, soft, flat bag of padded nylon twill with a satin sheen, made in the shape of the bag in which military pilots carry their flying helmets. Two deep patch pockets cover most of the front; a quilted band runs across the top beneath a full-length zip; two short rolled handles and a broad shoulder strap carry it. It is nearly square, 47 by 51 centimetres, and inside there is room for a sixteen-inch laptop. A small woven PORTER label sits on the lower corner of one pocket.

It belongs to the Tanker series that Yoshida & Co., the Tokyo bag-maker founded by Yoshida Kichizo in 1935, introduced in 1983 under its PORTER brand. The designer, the founder's son Yoshida Katsuyuki, took the MA-1 flight jacket as his model, then little seen in Japan, and had a three-layer padded nylon made for it, with zips and fittings of the company's own design. Its original colour was sage green.

The bags did not sell at first, and Yoshida kept making them in small numbers. In 1997 the actor Kimura Takuya carried his own Tanker in the television drama Love Generation, and the series took off; it has been the brand's signature ever since, and the helmet bag the piece that stands for it.

The company says this bag has kept the form it had in 1983. What has changed is the cloth and the details. In 2019 the zip pulls and inner pockets were reworked to the lines of the 1983 specification and the sage green returned to its first shade; in 2024 the outer nylon was replaced with one made entirely from maize and castor oil, developed with Toray, under the slogan 'nothing changes, everything changes'. It is still sewn in Japan, and sold in sage green, black and iron blue.