The idea of the MPM R.P.T. A conversation with Philippe Montagne, designer of this bag.
Philippe Montagne is not the kind of designer who starts with a mood board. When he began working on the R.P.T — Reisepass Tasche, the newest piece in the Maison Philippe Montagne line — he started with a list of measurements. We spoke with him about where the idea came from, what the constraints taught him, and why the hotel safe is part of the design brief.
The R.P.T is a departure from the rest of the MPM collection. It is smaller, more functional in its brief. Where did it start?
It started at a gate. I travel a great deal, and there is a moment I have experienced too many times: you need your passport, your boarding pass, and your phone at the same instant, and none of them is in the same place. You put one thing down to find another, and by the time you have everything the person at the desk has already seen this film a thousand times. I was tired of being that person. So I started asking myself: what would it take to actually solve this? Not work around it, solve it.
And the answer was a bag?
The answer was a very specific kind of bag. The distinction matters. I did not begin by thinking "I will make a passport holder." I began by writing down the dimensions of everything a traveller actually needs during transit. Passport size. Credit card size. Smartphone. Flat charger. Power bank. In-ear earphone case. These are fixed measurements. You cannot change them. So you design around them.
That sounds more like an engineering exercise than a design one.
At the beginning, yes. But the engineering is what sets the constraints, and the constraints are where the design begins. Once I had the minimum dimensions of everything that needed to fit, I had one further constraint I imposed on myself: the bag had to be able to slip into a jacket side pocket or chest pocket. That gave me a maximum width of 110 millimetres. Everything else had to work within that.
110 millimetres is not very wide.
No, it is not. And I will be honest: the R.P.T is a little on the wide side as a result, because once you have the passport and the smartphone stacked, you are already using most of your envelope. But what you get for that width is everything. Passport slot. Boarding pass slot. Fourteen card slots. A zip pocket for keys, coins, SIM cards. Two flat pockets for cables and earphones. A rounded back compartment for the power bank or charger adapter. And a flat pocket for the smartphone. Everything is inside it. The storage capacity surprises people. It surprised me, and I designed it.
The shape — a rounded rectangle — is not a typical choice for a leather bag.
No, and that was a considered decision. Most bags choose between rigid and soft. A hard case is rigid. A tote is soft. I wanted the R.P.T to sit between those two poles: structured enough to hold its form through a full day of transit, rounded enough to feel right in the hand and against the body. The rounded corners also make the bag feel less clinical, less like a document wallet. It has a presence that a pure rectangle would not have.
Tell me about the leathers.
The front face is smooth box calf. The back panel and the strap are grained taurillon. This is the same dual-leather combination we use in the Ristretto. I think of it as an MPM house signature at this point: the contrast between the two skins, the smooth and the grained, gives the bag its visual depth without any applied decoration. No hardware ornament, no embossing beyond the monogram. The leather does the work.
Five carrying options. Was that intentional from the start, or did it emerge?
It was intentional, because the R.P.T needs to adapt to very different moments in a single journey. At the airport you might carry it crossbody. On the plane, around the neck or in your lap. At the hotel, in your hand or at the belt. Each situation is different. The bag needed to travel with you through all of them without asking you to rethink how you carry it.
And then it goes into the hotel safe.
That was part of the brief from the beginning, yes. The R.P.T is not just a transit bag. It is the object that organises everything you need to move, and when you are not moving it should be secured with everything still inside it, ready for the next departure. You arrive, you open the safe, you put the R.P.T in. You do not unpack it. When you leave, you take it out and you are ready. That is the idea. Organised. In control. Feel good factor clicked on high.
Where does it sit within the MPM line?
It is the smallest bag we make, and in some ways the most ambitious. The 96Hrs is immediately striking, it commands attention, it defines a room. The R.P.T is almost the opposite: it is discreet, it is precise, it does an enormous amount of work without announcing itself. But I think they share the same underlying logic, which is that a well-designed travel object should make the journey feel more simple, not less. That is what we are always trying to do.
The MPM R.P.T is available in Tan, Cabernet, White, Taupe and Green. Full-grain leather from certified tanneries in France and Italy. YKK zippers.
Further readings:
What makes a Luxury Mini Backpack beautiful?
Other Luxury mini backpacks compared
Why ArtDeco remains the language of modern luxury