RIMOWA x SHARP
Time comes for us all. Yet, in the case of RIMOWA, that’s the point.
Since its 1898 inception, the luggage label has shaped its story around high-quality travel bags and trunks, spun from signature blends of strong materials like aluminum, polycarbonate, and leather. If you treat your RIMOWA well, it’ll be the last suitcase you ever buy.
Today, the German label is known for well-crafted suitcases with serious staying power. In fact, longevity is a main character in RIMOWA’s latest campaign, “For a Lifetime of Lives.” Told through three short films — directed by Argentinian filmmaking collective Pantera, and scored by American trumpeter and composer Theo Croker — the campaign traces a single aluminium case as it passes from father to son. Stickers and dents stack up like chapters, turning a carrying case into an intergenerational story. It’s a campaign about legacy told through objects: the things we carry become part of who we are.
The first film, Window Seat, opens on a handoff. Watching his son prepare to flee the nest, a trumpet-playing father bestows his cased instrument as a parting gift. Clips from the father’s past intersperse with scenes of his son taking flight. The second instalment, Run It Back, follows the son as a working musician; grinding through rehearsal rooms and road trips, he scuffs up his RIMOWA in the best way possible. The final film, Another Take, is more interior. Viewers take in the soft rituals that precede each performance and the celebration that follows.
Taken together, the three-episode arc is an exercise in “show, don’t tell.” Emphasizing the emotional journey behind each trip, For a Lifetime of Lives espouses the virtues of RIMOWA: expert engineering and durable materials turn the suitcase from item to heirloom.
Tyler Mitchell, who photographs with an attentiveness usually reserved for fine art, contributes a series of still images expanding the campaign’s world. A common thread of intimacy runs through each photo, showcasing the moments between a person and the objects they rely on.
At the heart of every image and episode is the RIMOWA Classic Cabin Silver. Crafted at the company’s Cologne factory, marked by signature grooved aluminum shells, the Classic collection is easily identified and even easier to love. With it, RIMOWA offers its clients a rare travel companion: always there when you need it, getting better as it gets older.
That’s the idea RIMOWA is betting on, anyway — that the best things you own are the ones still with you decades from now. Marked up and worn in, your suitcase tells a story that lasts far beyond one trip.
HERO IMAGE: “FOR A LIFETIME OF LIVES,” PHOTO COURTESY OF RIMOWA.
