Luggage is both the foundation and fountainhead of Observer: the portable home, the forward base, the baseline. The caravan, sailboat, or sub of the past lives on today—for me and thousands of other traveling professionals—as the suitcase in general, and RIMOWA aluminum in particular.
Observer experiments with suitcases started in 2019. I wanted hard-sided luggage fitted for my cameras like the Tropicanas of old. I wanted the iconic aluminum, I wanted the lingering stares of stewardesses at the check in counter, but not a second glance strapping my suitcases to a Kabul taxi. Or across the cobblestones of Napoli, or at train stations past midnight.
A journalist friend wanted his bullet-proofed: Rolling-cover, turning soft-skinned vehicles defensive on hard streets. Transit hubs, terrorism. It made enough sense to make a prototype.
I didn’t want my suitcases to be hidden away in a closet when I got home or to my hotel, I wanted them under my feet or laptop, a constant in my workflow in a sea of changing cities. After decades of service, I wanted to see my trunks, bruised like the day after a fight, swapped paint like stock-cars, as coffee tables, trunks or stools in the alter of home. I designed a universal seat that secured to all styles of Rimowa handles, transforming cases into seating.
My mind turned to Cerakote—the space-age ceramic coating I first came to know during my Force Recon years, when the finish earned a reputation on the coveted, hard-worn firearms of Special Forces. Peerless abrasion resistance. Protection against rust and UV. Seemingly impervious to every solvent and grease known to man. It could endure almost any trial, yet be applied with the detail and variety of airbrushed paint in a layer only microns thick. Its signature flat colors could describe two decades of conflict in Pantone: Coyote Tan, Ranger Green, Benelli Sand. Unlike traditional firearm finishes, almost any color, combination, or pattern was possible. As Cerakote spread into the automotive industry, its thermal-damping properties became another advantage.
In 2019 Observer did a necessary and violently costly thing: putting a Rimowa roll-aboard in an oven. While Cerakote can be applied at room temperature, Cerakote cured in an oven is even stronger. We learned some things, primarily the melting point for handles and wheel housings.
Then we made a bigger oven and put more suitcases in it.
I called it the STA System(Straight-to-Airport), and it’s been on the road ever since. The micron-thin ceramic coat has held up across 7 years and hundreds of thousands of miles of air, train, boat, and burro travel. The seating system has been called into remote work stations, and fashion campaigns.
The soft armor is in a closet in Barcelona, or Kyiv. It once surged and skittered across the southern front in Ukraine as a Bratsvo vehicle patrol dashed across terrain under Russian observation and fires. I sat behind the driver, he sat on the armor, and we agreed that it would favor one of us on insertion and the other on exfil.
The Cerakote team took an interest in the RIMOWA cases fitted with the STA System and agreed to coat another set for me. The finished cases feature a double layer of Cerakote and vivid yet graphically flat colors that make these iconic RIMOWAs harder-wearing, lower-profile, and inarguably individual.
You can see the entire design process, from our color samples to the Cerakote process on the Observer Instagram. If the end results interest you, I’d ask you to share that interest with Rimowa. I think, and believe the Cerakote makes an incredible custom option for the world’s professional travelers.
While these Rimowas aren’t for sale, with a certified Cerakote applicator, you can certainly void your warranty making your own, using either a new Rimowa, or a well-used one that has been stripped and its exterior cleaned. Observer believes in providing you with a peerless canvas for your adventures, even if it can only be as a proof-of-concept….
New STA System: Rimowa Original XL Trunk in Kabul Cafe , and Rimowa Classic in Amber Clad
