January 27, 2023

What your brand of bag tells me

The bag is a signifier. The bag teaches others how to see you. On trip, your bag is more for others than for you.

Here, in brief, is what your bag says about you:

• Away: You travel twice a year. You think that this is frequent. You have given up on the idea of bags, conceptually. You have no sense of personal space on an airplane, or in an airport. You walk onto a peoplemover belt, stop in the exact middle, and start checking your phone.
• American Tourister: You travel once a year. You know this is not frequent. You are afraid, deeply afraid, of the airport. You have no idea what precheck is. You speak often of “travel” in terms of leaving your county.
• Briggs & Riley: You are 1K and don’t give a fuck who knows it. You know that any damage to your luggage is a battle scar worth appreciating. You have never waited more than 10 minutes to clear security anywhere, for any reason. You always glide, smugly, into the lounge. You have done at least one mileage run. When home, you throw elegant dinner parties with jazz records on vinyl, full of laughter and deep conversation. When on trip, you always seem to get invited into someone’s home so they can cook for you. You either have a Russian blue cat named Walter, or a saluki named Olivia.
• Tumi: You would like me to subscribe to your podcast about business. I will not do this, but I’m glad you’ve found your voice, keep on being you.
• Travelpro: Either you read the Wirecutter or you are a crew member.
• Rimowa: Either you’re into design to such a degree that it has become your personal brand, or you’re a hypebeast in the global north who doesn’t live in the United States.
• Aer or Minaal: You’re the kind of San Francisco resident who believes that if your corporeal form is not in San Francisco, you are not part of “the conversation.”
• Osprey: You have a National Parks passport with at least 20 stamps in it, and an actual passport with two stamps in it, both of which are in Central America. You have slept in the Grand Canyon. You are absolutely ripped, but you don’t make a thing of it. You homebrew. You wildcraft. You have a kombucha hookup. You have a lot of feelings about Robin Wall Kimmerer.
• Peak Design: You work in the tech industry and have an unironic “live, laugh, love” plaque in your kitchen.
• Topo: You either live in Colorado, or you think you found the coolest backpack ever and you wonder why nobody else seems to know about it.
• Cotopaxi: If you aren’t queer, most of your friends are. You love travel and do it often. Your colorway speaks to something nobody else really can “get” about you. You never really thought through whether a Cotopaxi would make you a theft target, what with them being neon pixels you can see from space, but fortunately that doesn’t matter because you’re not going anywhere that has a high rate of pickpocketing anyway. You went to Burning Man once in a year after 2010.
• GoRuck: You’re a cop.
• Tortuga: You are a digital nomad. The only time anyone sees your Tortuga bag is when you are in transit between places where you plan on living for at least a year. Your bag holds several more sub-bags, like a glorious matryoshka of fractal EDC. You only use half of the pockets that you are ever given, in any bag, wallet, or article of clothing. Locals hate you because you are wearing a refrigerator on your back in a packed crowd – but at least you’re physically comfortable.
• Samsonite: You are at least 50 years old.