What People Think
Beautiful carbon color and strong!
I want to buy one more small size also.
beautiful and sexy in tobacco and black!
Awesome
Bravo!
Design
The leather suitcase was purposefully designed without wheels for 2 reasons.
Aesthetics:
Wheels look bad with this old classic leather suitcase style (Imagine a $15,000 suit with roller skates). However, this is functional art, so you can put it next to your desk or sofa when not traveling.
Longevity:
Wheels on suitcases break or get flat spots on them, making that embarrassing tapping sound when rolling. And then when that happens, the suitcase is finished.
Product Details
Dimensions (W x H x D)27" x 19" x 9"
Weight: 18 lbs (Check the weights of like-sized Tumi or Hartmann suitcases; you'll see it is about average.)
The Best Leather We Can Find
This leather suitcase was built entirely with full-grain leather. Here's why that's so important. The leather's grain is on the top of the hide and is the most durable part. The grain helps it age handsomely and stay water resistant (cows are waterproof, right?).
Most companies buy low quality, heavily scarred-up leather, shave off the scars and blemishes (along with all of the grain) to save as much money as they can by being able to use more of the hide. If they shave off some of the grain, that's top grain leather. If they shave all of it off or split the hide in half, that's called genuine or split leather. We WANT as much grain on our suitcases and other baggage as we can get. We want it all. Therefore, we must select three hides with almost no imperfections to make each leather suitcase. And then, completely unnecessarily, I lined the suitcase interior with tough, durable pigskin.
Functionality
One time, we were taking a two month trip around the world, filming a documentary on the making of our canvas line, Mountainback. We had my wife and I, our two little kids, and our filmmaker, Joe. There were eight full 50 lb. Leather Suitcases and Beast Duffle Bags are packed for cold weather (Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand) and hot weather (Kenya and Rwanda). We also had 2 large carry-ons per person. You can imagine the size of the vehicle we needed to rent to fit all of our things. Well, when we got to Australia, low and behold, they only had tiny little vehicles to rent. This would have stressed out any traveler with lesser luggage, but not us. So I took the two removable belts off our suitcases and strapped most of the luggage to the cute little roof rack.
The suitcase is not lightweight, but it's not too heavy either. It is the right balance to make it challenging to fit 50 lbs. (23 kgs) into it. The interior is just one simple wide open space with two interior straps to hold clothes in place like they used to make them.
Luggage with Real Leather Straps
The leather straps that wrap around and buckle the suitcase closed are full grain leather, just like the rest of the leather suitcase. This is not the cheap fabric or PU (polyurethane) synthetic leather strap that most luggage brands use.
Durability
On the first major trip with my first suitcase, I carried this leather suitcase and my leather briefcase throughout Eastern Europe and North Africa for about 6 weeks. And about 3 weeks into it, the suitcase handle broke. The added complexity and energy exerted made me swear that would never happen to anyone who carried one of my suitcases.
The handle is now bolted onto the leather suitcase and hand-sewn with boot-cord to the body. It is scarce for leather luggage to have this sort of serious consideration, but I wanted you to have the best leather luggage set you can get. Good wasn't enough; great leather luggage takes time to be designed right, then it needs to be used and abused to discover any changes that can make it better. We did that.
There are no breakable parts like zippers, snaps, buttons, etc. Using those is like putting a cardboard hatch on a billion-dollar submarine. Once the hatch breaks, the submarine is worthless. So instead of metal hinges, I designed them with a double layer of full grain leather along the back. And the body is mostly handsewn with heavy-duty waxed boot cord for added strength.
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