Rimowa

Paul Morszeck founded his Cologne trunk workshop in 1898; his son Richard gave the company its name — RIchard MOrszeck WArenzeichen — and its destiny, borrowing grooved aluminum from the Junkers aircraft of the 1930s to build the suitcase that became design history. The parallel grooves were structural first, iconic second: the rare luggage recognizable from across a terminal without a logo in sight.

Pilots, photographers and film crews certified it for decades — aluminum Rimowas carried lenses through jungles and film stock through wars — before polycarbonate, which Rimowa introduced to luggage in 2000, made the grooves featherweight. The Cologne factory still builds the aluminum line with hundreds of manual steps.

LVMH acquired eighty percent in 2016 — the group's first German maison — installing Alexandre Arnault, then 24, to modernize it: collaborations from Supreme to Dior, repairs-for-life service, the grooves licensed to no one. Rimowa remains what engineering-led luxury looks like: the case outlasting its contents, dents worn as passport stamps.