TRAVELING LIGHT: Harper Collective, the sustainable luggage brand founded in 2023 by Jaden Smith and Sebastian Manes, is gearing up to launch its first collaboration with German luxury brand MCM.
Word has it MCM executives discovered the new Harper Collective shop-in-shop at Selfridges last summer, and immediately approached Smith — an actor, musician and activist — and Manes, a veteran merchandising and buying executive long associated with the London retailer.
The three co-branded cases — two cabin-sized, plus one larger check-in model — are dropping July 11 at MCM flagship stores, the Harper Collective website, and the Harper Collective shop-in-shop at Selfridges, which boasts fixtures made of recycled fishing nets and recycled aluminum in line with its eco-conscious ethos.
“Offset before you even set off” is the tag line for the project.
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According to MCM, Smith, who dropped his latest single “Roses” last month, conceived the campaign, which will feature computer generated imagery and graffiti by Japanese artist Inagaki. Spoiler alert: The storyline roughly involves an alien confronting “the dilemma and opportunity of plastic waste” in the oceans of Earth.
Harper Collective’s hard-shell cases are manufactured in Italy and the U.K. from a material that incorporates 70 percent recycled ocean plastics, including fishing nets, and post-consumer plastics, too. Meanwhile, MCM contributed mostly upcycled and eco components, including recycled nylon for the quilted interior, deadstock webbing straps to secure the contents of the suitcase, and luggage tags made from Maxi Visetos coated canvas.
Visetos, in MCM’s signature cognac color, also wraps the aluminum handles on the cases, which have an industrial-tinged aesthetic.
According to the partners, no two suitcases will be identical due to the upcycled nature of the source material.
Sung-Joo Kim, chairperson of MCM Group, noted that the brand, founded in Munich in 1976, arrived at a “time of innovation, exploration and discovery across culture, travel and technology.”
More recently, MCM has been leaning into sustainability, believing “it is our responsibility to do things better for our planet and society,” Kim said. “By taking a smart approach to our collection development, we introduce a sustainable lifestyle presentation through seasonless designs.”
There are high-tech components to the Harper Collective x MCM range, too. Each case includes a blockchain-linked NFC chip to serialize and authenticate individual pieces.
Meanwhile, a digital product passport, or DPP, enabled through Aura Blockchain Consortium’s platform, “allows our customers to effortlessly verify the authenticity and sustainability of their purchases by simply scanning the embedded NFC chip” and discover “the entire life cycle of the product transparently documented,” according to MCM.
