Luggage specialist Rimowa celebrates its 125 anniversary

Recognisable at airports around the world, the grooved shells of Rimowa suitcases – made from polymers or, most famously, aluminium – are in and of themselves a tribute to aviation.

Originally, the parallel pattern was designed – in 1950 – to mimic the corrugated fuselage of the pioneering all-metal transport aircraft Junkers F 13, which first took to the skies in 1919. It's a fitting homage, as the history of Rimowa, which this year celebrates its 125th anniversary, is chaptered by changing modes of transport.

"What is interesting with our cases is that they are a clear demonstration of the evolution of travel in general," says Emelie De Vitis, Rimowa's senior vice president of product and marketing. "You can see different milestones, like the explosion of air travel in the 1950s."

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Paul Morszeck established the business that would become Rimowa in 1898, opening a saddlery shop in Cologne. The company specialised in travel wardrobes and steamer trunks, built for ocean crossings and longer train journeys.

Displayed as part of Rimowa's "Seit 1898", a touring exhibition that has stopped in Tokyo and New York and is soon to open in Shanghai and then Cologne, is a sizeable wardrobe trunk lined in fabric and dated to the 1950s. It is built from steel and vulcanised fibre, and made complete with wooden hangers.

Somewhat more agile are cases proportioned to be attached to early automobiles and made from leather-coated plywood or vulcanised fibre. Aluminium was introduced in 1927, offered as a metallic trim that catches the eye.

In 1931, Paul's son Richard joined the company – Rimowa is a portmanteau of his name and Warenzeichen, the German term for trademark – and not long after, in 1937, the family embraced aluminium as a core material.

"Do you know that serendipitous anecdote of why we use aluminium?" asks De Vitis. "There was a fire at the factory. We were making leather and wooden trunks, which all burned. The only thing that stayed was the aluminium component."

Aluminium has since been used to fabricate carry-on and check-in luggage; Rimowa has also used the metal for more experimental designs: bespoke cases shaped to hold a dozen bottles of champagne, golf clubs, watches or vinyl records.

Elsewhere, the brand, which in 2016 joined luxury goods group LVMH, has extended carte blanche to creative collaborators: Dior's artistic director of menswear, Kim Jones, has cloaked anodised aluminium in the fashion house's famous Oblique logo pattern; last year, Paris design practice Avoir envisioned a cabin built from grooved aluminium.

"Aluminium is a strong symbol of Rimowa," says De Vitis. "[It] is complicated to use and that's why we are one of the few brands to have aluminium cases. It takes a long time to develop the frame, the moulds, everything that we need. Sometimes people say that we are slow, but that's because there is so much engineering that goes into the aluminium, it takes time to come up with solutions."

It's a way of working that at Rimowa has been christened Ingenieurskunst, which translates as "the art of engineering". Explains De Vitis: "We say it's like a symphony, mixing German engineering with craftsmanship, technique and finesse."

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Fans of Rimowa include Patti Smith, Takashi Murakami, Roger Federer and Martha Stewart, who customises her trunk using a black marker pen. "I write every destination of my trips on my Rimowa," says Stewart. "It’s called memory keeping."