Philstar Lifestyle exclusive: Rimowa recreates golden age of travel with F13

Rimowa rolled out its latest line of grooved aluminum luggage in the grand and glamorous style typical of the brand.

To introduce the Rimowa F13, the German company invited 100 journalists from all over the world to the EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, an airshow attended by half a million aviation enthusiasts each year.

Since EAA stands for “Experimental Aircraft Association,”  something aircraft-related was obviously in the works.

After watching the airshow, where hotshot pilots did aerial acrobatics worthy of the movie Top Gun, we were ushered into a hangar, the doorway of which bore the sign “A Legend Grows New Wings.” The space was decorated in the glittery art deco style of the Roaring Twenties, with a jazz band providing the music and later, a surprise concert by Grammy-winning chanteuse Norah Jones.

But the real surprise lay hidden under wraps onstage.

After a fashion show where models dressed in flapper attire rolled aluminum F13 cases around with ease, Rimowa president and CEO Dieter Morszeck did the big reveal, unveiling a near-exact replica of the airplane that inspired the collection: the Junkers F13.

“A German called Alfred Wilm developed aircraft aluminum in 1906,” Morszeck said, “and Hugo Junkers used this material for the first all-metal passenger aircraft in world. For me it is so important to name Professor Junkers (pronounced “Yoong-kers”) because he was a genius engineer.”

Indeed, Junkers’ F13 became the mother of today’s commercial aircraft.

“Junkers was a revolutionary designer — he not only relied on a new material but was a far-sighted aviation entrepreneur who recognized that a new international civil aviation market would emerge a mere 15 years after the first motorized flight,” Morszeck continued. “The elegant airplane, whose enclosed cabin could carry four passengers, turned journeys that would take days by ship or train into ones that would last only a few hours, allowing businessmen and tourists to travel quickly and comfortably.”

Though over 300 Junkers F13s were produced in the 1920s for commercial travel, only five have survived, preserved today in museums around the world. Since none of them are flightworthy, Morszeck and a team composed of Swiss JU Air CEO Kurt Waldmeier, VFL (Association of Friends of Historical Aircrafts) chairman Bernd Huckenbeck and 29-year-old aviation engineer Dominik Kalin decided to build a completely new F13 based on Junkers’ original design.

“Because you find no complete set of drawings, we went to Paris and scanned the whole plane with a 3D scanner,” Morszeck says. “We made some improvements but of course everything is built to original (specifications).”

Building the Rimowa F13 took 9,000 work hours and nearly 2,000 square feet of duralumin — Wilm’s lightweight alloy that merges aluminum with more rigid metals like magnesium — fixed with 35,000 rivets.

One of its most distinctive aspects is its corrugated fuselage, which directly inspired Morszeck’s father, Richard, to create a new breed of grooved lightweight metal luggage in 1950, a radical innovation on the heavy wooden trunks of the time.

“We think it should be something new, a line of luggage with a lot of aircraft aluminum,” Morszeck says. “It will be a little bit vintage, and look like what we showed in the 1950s.”

SILVER SUITCASES WITH GROOVES

The Rimowa F13s are indeed retro and romantic, with silver aluminum shells embossed with an illustration of the Junkers F13 on one side and black leather corners and handles. Plush fabric lines the interior, with crisscrossing straps to secure your personal effects on one side and a flat mesh garment bag on the other — perfect for slipping a crisp ironed shirt into.

The suitcase is a functional work of art and looks like nothing else on the market — or the baggage carousel, for that matter, which may be why the security folks at TSA just had to take a look inside my bag. When I got home I knew it had been opened because, not only was there a note from TSA, but my commemorative book on the Junkers F13, which I had packed at the bottom of the suitcase, was now sitting on top, like a tribute.

“Junkers’ idea of using corrugated aluminum gave a very good relationship of strength, robustness and light weight to the plane,” Morszeck said. “Other aircraft didn’t use these grooves. It’s a part of our heritage.”

FROM LUGGAGE TO AIRCRAFT

Morszeck also revealed that Rimowa has established an aircraft-manufacturing company that will keep on building planes. “We have five planes and of course we are interested to build the next one, especially for the US market,” he says. “They’re very slow-flying and low-flying, so you can see something like the Alps and it gives you something you never forget.”

In 2012 Rimowa restored a couple of Junkers JU52s to airworthiness, and brand ambassador Alessandra Ambrosio flew in one of these larger transport planes to New York City. “We went to the Statue of Liberty and it was sunset — it was the most beautiful flight of my life,” recounts the Brazilian supermodel.

Morszeck, who has been an avid pilot himself for 33 years, crossed the Atlantic in a JU52 as part of the crew. “It was amazing to fly over Greenland, to see the really brilliant white of the ice and the turquoise color of the sea,” he recalls. They flew 30,000 kilometers over the course of 61 days (with occasional stops) with no major problems.

Now operated by companies like Swiss JU Air, these two Rimowa-branded JU52s take tourists on scenic flights of Germany and Switzerland.

As an aircraft manufacturer Morszeck says there are no specific plans to build a Rimowa fleet, but surely one will become inevitable at the rate they’re going.  Talk about vertical integration: your luggage manufacturer will also be building the planes you put your luggage into! With such bold moves Rimowa seems set on recreating the golden age of travel, except instead of wrangling enormous plywood trunks in which you’d transport most of your household with you, you’ll be rolling along high-tech duralumin cases that will be smart enough to check themselves in. I kid you not.

“Speaking about progression in this brand, what they’ve now developed is something very convenient for frequent travelers,” says Rimowa’s other brand ambassador, German model Johannes Huebl. “Pretty soon you will be able to check your baggage from your smartphone over the application called ‘Bag to Go,’ but what is really important for someone like Alessandra and I who travel a lot, you don’t have to wait anymore. There is no check-in waiting line and no baggage claim where you have to sit and wait for your luggage, it just arrives at your destination and your hotel. So I think this is just a fantastic new invention; it saves a lot of money and time.”

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In the Philippines, Rimowa stores are located in Greenbelt 5, Adora Greenbelt 5, Glorietta 4, Power Plant Mall, Newport Mall, and Shangri-La Plaza Mall.

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