It’s a common airport scene: businessman wears pristine travel suit and stylish shoes but in his hand, or at the end of an extendable handle, sits a tatty sports bag or a battered suitcase. As Juergen Gessler, Chief Executive of the Porsche Design Group, says, We’re travelling more, but there just haven’t been many masculine, high-design, high-function travel pieces. It’s a market with huge potential. It’s time for a luxury travel bag for the professional man.
According to retail analysts Mintel, the travel bag and luggage market is worth approximately £368m ($591m) in the UK alone, and yet a gap remains for stylish smaller bags destined for the airport cabin. It’s always been impossible to find the balance between functionality and style, at least if you avoid anything too fey, says Simon Aboud, managing director of advertising agency Make Believe. I’ve long depended on an unblingy bag from utilitarian Japanese brand Porter. For everything else, nothing beats a strong plastic bag. The best come from Cape Town Duty Free.
A plastic bag? There must be something better than that. According to Paolo Fontanelli, Chief Executive of Furla, “the convention has been for men to opt for the purely practical, with just a few buying styles that are very high fashion – or those rather ugly trolley-bags.” This summer Furla launched its first men’s line, including leather holdalls, kit-bags and shoppers (from £250 to £360). “Men demand function,” Fontanelli adds, “they like to be able to find all their things quickly. But increasingly they want style too; something that looks masculine and in line with their profession.”
Philippe Leboeuf, general manager of Claridge’s, believes an elegant bag is an essential part of an overall look. “For many men there’s a lot of planning and stress involved in packing,” he says. “Not only do you need exactly the right bag for each trip, you want it to look good.”
While recent years have seen the luggage market dominated by global specialists such as Samsonite and Bric’s, now designer brands are looking to add some extra style to smaller travel bags. Witness the Travel System from Porsche Design (from £275), Swisswerks from Victorinox (makers of the Swiss Army Knife, from £65), and the latest line from Dunhill (from £550) offering travel bags made from super-light, water- and scratch-proof carbon-fibre printed leather, more typically used on luxury car dashboards. The idea, says Porsche’s Juergen Gessler, is to offer men a way to be different onboard.
Stuart Stockdale, Jaeger’s head of design, admits, it’s so difficult for men to find a hard-working but good-looking carry-on bag. You find a good one but it doesn’t have a shoulder strap. Or it does have a strap, but no compartments. Hence Jaeger’s decision to produce its first men’s travel bag line, including holdall and cabin styles (from £399). Meanwhile, luxury shoemakers Berluti are launching a compact, lightweight calf-leather model, Formula 1000 (£4,860). Customers can pick from different colour options and its traction-supported ultra-silent wheels come with rims in two styles: sedan or sports.
And, if you’re still doubtful, why not design your own bag, says stylist Harris Elliott. You see men using either very sporty holdalls, which are hardly right for a meeting, or logo-covered fashion bags, which aren’t discreet enough either, he says. I was getting so tired of trying to find the right bag that I had one made and men kept asking me, ‘Where’s that bag from?’, so I thought I’d design more. The result: H by Harris bags, which include leather holdalls, weekend bags, and nubuck totes.
By Josh Sims
