If handbags, not suitcases, were redistributed on a carousel after a flight, Rimowa‘s The Original Bag would certainly be easy to spot.
The German brand’s first serious entry in a saturated category is made of grooved aluminum like its popular luggage, and is equally unisex in spirit and “timeless” in look.
It is also functional in a way most luxury leather purses are not, considering the mobility habits of today’s urban denizens, who zip around town on subways, electric bicycles, Ubers and other shared means of transportation.
“The notion of responsible traveling is gaining very significant ground,” Rimowa chief executive officer Hugues Bonnet-Masimbert said in an exclusive interview to discuss and unveil The Original Bag, billed as the brand’s biggest launch of the year.
He explained that business travel has yet to rebound to pre-pandemic levels, whereas individual and near-home travel is flourishing, creating new lifestyles needs.
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“It’s a fantastic intellectual playground, because we are faced with new challenges, and new opportunities to develop the perfect bag to go to the gym, the perfect bag to ride a bicycle,” he said.
Dropping in Rimowa boutiques and online from Thursday, The Original Bag comes in silver or black and retails for 1,750 euros.
It arrives in tandem with a campaign featuring four on-the-move creatives: model Liu Wen, rapper Central Cee, fashion editor and Off-White creative director Ib Kamara, and photographer Larissa Hofmann. It breaks Thursday on Rimowa’s digital channels.
Rimowa made its first big moves beyond the suitcase category around the time of the coronavirus crisis via its Never Still and Signature lines of canvas and nylon backpacks, totes, cross-body bags, pouches and business cases.
“These lines are doing very, very well,” Bonnet-Masimbert said, also citing frequent sellouts of its aluminum and polycarbonate Personal bags, which also closely resemble Rimowa suitcases.
He allowed that the diminutive style — roughly the size of a brick — has “been paramount to the genesis of The Original Bag, because with the Personal, we’ve experienced our ability to be distinctive in a market that is extremely competitive.
“But we are still in the genesis of expanding our product territories,” he said, acknowledging how competitive the handbag market is, already chockablock with solid options from seasoned specialists. “So we really took our time over two years to define what was going to be Rimowa’s take.”
Technical challenges were many. Rimowa’s engineers had to miniaturize some of the building blocks of four-wheel suitcases, including an aluminum frame, and to develop a button mechanism that requires only one finger to open.
He noted that he and Rimowa’s previous CEO Alexandre Arnault defined mobility in the broadest sense as a long-term goal for the Cologne-based firm after Arnault spearheaded its acquisition by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton back in 2016.
“Mobility means going from home to work, being in the subway, going to yoga class…trips near home, short trips. It’s super broad,” he said, explaining that the ambition is “to develop the same level of relevancy we have for travel on these new categories.”
Luggage still represents “by a vast distance” the largest Rimowa business, and it continues to grow strongly from a very high base, Bonnet-Masimbert said. Incidentally, suitcase customers are equally split between women and men.
Founded in 1898, Rimowa is credited with launching the first suitcases in aluminum and polycarbonate, in 1937 and 2000, respectively. Four-wheel designs and waterproofing are other breakthroughs.
The company considers its first handbag the Piccolo, introduced in limited quantities in 1994 as part of a collaboration with Christian Dior. Still, it was conceived as a small travel bag.
The Original, while similar in look to the Piccolo, boasts a handcrafted leather handle, a leather-lined interior, slots to hold credit cards and a zippered leather pouch that separates two internal compartments.
Bonnet-Masimbert considers the design disruptive in terms of its use of aluminum, its complex manufacturing process, its unisex styling and its wearing versatility. It can be carried by hand, as a shoulder bag, or cross-body style.
“The key challenge I gave to our designers was to transcend the conventional boundaries of, ‘Oh, it’s a day bag. No, it’s an evening bag. Or if it’s a casual bag, or a formal bag,’” he said. “I told them, ‘I’d like for a guy to go to work in the subway wearing this bag. I’d like for a woman to wear this bag at the cocktail party or wedding.’
“I have a hard time picturing other bags that meet these functions,” he said. “We also set out to create a beautiful object.”
The executive said he expects The Original Bag to attract the interest of its existing luggage clientele, which is very broad and includes fashion-forward types, as well as newcomers to the brand.
As Rimowa has ramped up collaborations and brand activations in recent years, it has seen certain products take on a life of their own, including soft bags and iPhone cases.
The Original Bag arrives at a time when Rimowa is riding high as personal travel continues to flourish.
“Against the backdrop of more challenging market environments, we are still enjoying the momentum of the past years,” Bonnet-Masimbert said. “We are growing in every geography and in all categories. So at a time where travel is normalized, let’s say we are no longer in the recovery phase.”
