Last year I spent a stupid amount of money to upgrade my travel gear from whatever my college part-time job income could get me at TJ Maxx to a couple of Away suitcases. I really wanted for them to be a statement color-wise: something like a purple, red or green. But after the sales person in the store confirmed my worst fear - anything but dark colors will inevitably scratch - I decided to make a mature decision and go with dark blue.
Seemingly, so did everyone else in America. Upon my first arrival at JFK with my brand new luggage and spending hours in the passport control line, I spotted a lonely dark blue suitcase at the baggage claim for Venice - NYC. But it wasn’t mine. Mine was gone. Someone grabbed it earlier that day thinking it was theirs. And I almost grabbed the one I found thinking it had to be mine. The minute I got home, I pulled out a stash of loud Glossier stickers I’ve been hoarding over the years and put them all over my bag to both make it easier for me to fish out my suitcase on the luggage belt and deter other travelers from taking it.
Customization is often marketed to us as an act of love or self-expression - you can engrave your loved one’s name on the back of a watch or write a cheesy inspiration quote on the cover of a Moleskine. But in the world full of identical everyday products sold to the masses, customization is also a utility. Think stickers on a Hydro Flasks and MacBooks - when everyone at work or at school carries around the same products, you are constantly at risk of swapping your saliva or files with someone else. Despite Away luggage falling into the same category of homogeneous pricey products though, customization of their bags isn’t nearly as common. Every time I land anywhere, there is at least one person picking up an Away suitcase, checking the tag, and putting it back on the luggage belt until they find theirs. Most of the Away bags move through the luggage belts in their original form.
It’s possible that most Away owners simply don’t travel enough to really feel the pain point of their bags’ sameness. But maybe part of the reason why more people don’t grab the nearest sticker or marker and make the suitcases their own is because cleanliness and minimalism have become practically synonymous with luxury, mature taste, and conscious consumption. Even Rimowa, a luggage company that proudly declares “Every Dent Tells a Story” as one of their brand lines and preaches that scratches, dents and stickers are what makes each suitcase unique, has a squeaky clean Instagram full of shiny luggage shots with an occasional photo from the archive that’s part of their 125 year anniversary campaign. It’s a shame really, because when I went to their anniversary exhibit in New York, I practically drooled over Martha Stewart’s Rimowa that has travel destinations and dates written all over it in black marker. I think it’s so chic to take an expensive bag and treat it like what it is - a bag.
Something I’d love to see more in general is status brands showing us products that have been lived in. I don’t really understand treating affordable luxury like museum exponents: arranging them in airy showrooms and plastering the brand IG account in studio product shots. It reminds me of the times my parents would take me back to school shopping, and I would spend at least 3 days after admiring all the new notepads and Crayons, afraid to ruin the perfect look inside my desk drawers by using them. If you make expensive moisturizer, I don’t want to see ten neat shots of brand new products. I want to see a tube that’s been squeezed to death on a hot girl’s crowded sink (it’s that good! and all you need!). I want to see it peaking out of a dirty pocket of a one-night stand’s jeans stealing it as a trophy. Products, no matter how nice they are, are just products. There are thousands of them made and sold every day, and it’s the messy life of each customer that makes each copy unique and create interesting and authentic brand stories.
A fun case study here are two Carhartt Instagram accounts: one for their original workwear brand that shows working men and women in action, and one for their Work In Progress brand that’s devoted to Carhartt’s urban wear and features beautiful young models dripped in hip brand collabs. The thing that makes Carhartt interesting to the young audience that has never participated in physical labor though is the soft feel and the grimy look of the worn Carhartt gear that sells for a lot of money in vintage stores across the country. The appeal of workwear as everyday wear in general is largely in the distress of sturdy fabrics that makes each garment look unique. The look of a brand new workwear jacket, just like the sterile look of the Carhartt’s WIP IG account, comes off a bit dorky. You take the sweat and dirt that are an integral part of the original brand out of an Instagram account and it looks like an AI-produced mashup of a teen mall brand and a minimalistic affordable luxury brand. Throw those mid-rise straight workwear pants into some dirt!
I understand the importance of telling a cohesive brand story. Especially, as a young brand, you want to pick a very specific community and engage deeply with it. But while some people want to buy into the fantasy and consumer image you create (i.e. Glossier girl), there is also a good number of consumers, especially young consumers, who want to be the main character and form an identity that’s irrespective of the brands they buy from. For them, those tight and spotless brand personas you perpetuate though ads and social can be a little suffocating and deterring. For me, Away is forever a millennial tech-adjacent brand and if I didn’t happen to experience the buttery smooth rolling of my ex’s carry on bag, I might have never purchased one for myself. But guess what - if I take a marker and write all over my minimalistic luggage in the most scratch-safe color, I am now rolling it through JFK and dragging it up and down four flights of stairs not in a cringe millennial DTC way but in homage to Martha Stewart’s Rimowa and Mary-Kate Olsen’s beat up Kelly bag. So much more acceptable and hot.
Thank you for reading all the way through! Follow me on IG for bonus content :)
Let me know what basic product/IG account could benefit from a little grime in the comments below 👀