Hot on the heels of their recent partnership with Supreme, luxury German luggage label Rimowa this morning announced the launch of a new collaboration – and this time it’s Virgil Abloh they’re teaming up with.
The Off-White founder and newly-instated Louis Vuitton creative director has designed two suitcases for the brand, both of which are due to hit stores imminently. In typical Abloh fashion, though, they’re less luggage and more art piece according to the designer himself, given they’re made of completely transparent polycarbonate. Yes, really. A see-through suitcase.
“It’s like 3.0 of personalisation. It’s not just putting your initials on it, but allowing another layer to come into play,” Abloh explained to The Business of Fashion. “There’s an emotional component to owning (the suitcase) and you become a performance art piece just by using the thing. It’s like putting your items on display and rethinking the premise of a product.”
The Off-White x Rimowa suitcase is the latest in a long line of accessories putting it all on show in recent months. The likes of Helmut Lang, Céline, and Chanel have sent a succession of see-through bags out onto their catwalks over the course of the last year – but Abloh’s collaborative cases take the trend to a whole new level. And though carrying one on the way to your destination is all well and good, the way back is a different story entirely. We might be living in the age of the overshare, but have we really reached the point where we're curating our dirty laundry now?
Whether anyone’s brave enough to swap out their (probably slightly more opaque) luggage for one of these – and in the process put themselves and their belongings out for all to see on the conveyor belt at collections – remains to be seen. One thing's for sure, though: they're going to make getting through airport security a whole lot quicker.
The Off-White x Rimowa transparent suitcase will go on sale on June 25 – and while no official prices have as yet been revealed the previous Supreme styles started at $1600 (no big deal).
