The Suitcase That Refused to Be Drawn
The story behind the MPM 96Hrs, told by the man who threw away every version of it but one
A conversation with Philippe Montagne, founder of Maison Philippe Montagne, Paris.
There is a particular kind of object that seems, once it exists, to have been inevitable. You look at it and cannot quite imagine the world without it, which is strange, because the world managed perfectly well without it for a very long time. The Chrysler Building has this quality. So does a Riva hull, or a well-cut trench coat. And so, in its own quiet way, does the 96Hrs, the metal cabin case with which Maison Philippe Montagne opened its story.
Inevitability, of course, is an illusion. It is what remains after everything else has been thrown away. When I sat down with Philippe Montagne in Paris to talk about the case that started his Maison, the conversation kept returning, almost against his will, to the drawings that did not survive.
You have said elsewhere that a bag has to have a soul. That is a demanding standard for a piece of cabin luggage. Where does one even begin?
With beauty, always. La quête de la beauté, the pursuit of beauty, it sounds grand, but it is really a discipline. Before there was a suitcase there was a question: what would the golden age of travel look like if it happened now? Not a pastiche of it, not a steamer trunk with a QR code. Something genuinely of our time that a traveller in 1930 would nonetheless have recognised as belonging to his world. Art Deco gave me the grammar for that. It is the last style that believed a functional object deserved the same care as a façade or a sculpture.
And yet the first designs did not survive.
None of them. I threw away several complete designs before this one. That is the part people find hard to believe, because from the outside a suitcase looks like a solved problem — a box, wheels, a handle. But I was fighting on two fronts at once. A design can be avant-garde and age badly, or timeless and boring. Each version I drew fell on one side or the other. One was too decorative; it would have looked dated in five years, and I could already see it dating. Another was so restrained it could have belonged to anyone, and a Maison that makes anonymous objects has no reason to exist. Architecture taught me the way out. When you look at the great Deco buildings, the emotion never comes from ornament alone. It comes from geometry — proportion, rhythm, the sunburst, the stepped line. Geometry does not go out of fashion. So the rule became: the structure carries the modernity, the detail carries the poetry, and nothing is allowed on the case that does not serve one or the other.
The material seems to have arrived with the same sense of conviction. Stainless steel and titanium PVD is not the conventional choice for luggage.
It was less a choice than a deduction. I asked myself a simple question: what do the objects I admire for their engineering have in common — the fighter aircraft, the jet engine, the fine watch case, the Formula 1 car? Stainless steel, for its strength and its resistance to corrosion. And what finish do those same industries use when they need superior hardness and wear resistance, and which happens also to be the most environmentally responsible? Titanium physical vapor deposition. At that point, honestly, we had no choice, did we? The first MPM luggage had to be made of this alloy of stainless steel and titanium PVD — we call it TitanInox. It is a material with a life expectancy closer to a watch than to a fashion accessory, which is exactly the point. An object meant to be kept should be built to be kept.
And then there is the engraving, which is where the case stops being an instrument and becomes something closer to an artwork.
That came from the armours. You know those suits of armour exhibited in the castle museums dotted around Europe, with delicate engravings chiselled into the protective plate? A surface designed to take a blow, treated with the tenderness of a jewel. I found that paradox irresistible — protection and refinement in the same skin. We had to have one.
The side panels of the 96Hrs are engraved with our own Compass Star pattern, the emblem of the voyage itself, while the front and rear plates are given a slightly sanded finish, partly for the play of light, partly, I admit, so the case does not collect fingerprints. There is a long dialogue with the artisans behind that engraving. Metal at this hardness does not forgive; every line has to be decided. When you run your hand across the panel you understand why the drawings that came before had to die. They did not have this.
At some point the reflection has to stop and the object has to work. How did you know when to stop?
There was a moment — I remember it clearly — when I caught myself adding yet another feature that appealed to me, and I understood I was decorating instead of designing. We got a grip on ourselves, stopped, and started the development. From then on the discipline was functional. Ninety-six hours: four days, which is the true rhythm of the modern voyage — the long weekend, the fair, the biennale. The case had to pass every international cabin gauge, so 360 by 550 by 220 millimetres with the wheels, thirty-five litres, four and a half kilos. Two TSA locks nestled in a protective recess, because a lock that protrudes is a lock that gets knocked. A telescopic handle and two flat handles in genuine leather, because the hand deserves leather even when the body is metal.
Silent TPE wheels on a toughened nylon bracket — a beautiful arrival should not be announced by its hardware.
The interior has a detail I have not seen elsewhere — the vertical open pocket.
Ah, that one is pure lived experience. Inside you find two main zippered compartments, a horizontal zippered pocket, and this vertical open pocket, all lined in suede. The vertical pocket exists because of trade shows. You are handed catalogues all day and nowhere to put them. So: open the case, roll open the two halves, slide the catalogue in — or your magazine, if you are on holiday — and close it again. Ten seconds, nothing falls out. Luxury that does not solve a real problem is only expense. For a long weekend the 96Hrs takes a trio of shirts, trousers or a dress, a swimsuit, four full changes, a cardigan, a second pair of shoes, the toilet bag, a large laptop, a tablet, a camera with a telephoto lens, and still the books. Everything in its place. The traveller who is organised is a traveller who is free.
Four finishes.Gold, Silver, Black, Cabernet. The gold, in particular, has become something of a signature, hasn’t it ?
Because nobody expects a gold metal suitcase, and then they see it and cannot look away. It is the Deco instinct again — richness worn with confidence, not apology. But each finish has its temperament. The silver is the engineer, the black is the flâneur at night, the cabernet is the one glass too many in the best possible way.
They are made for the Luxury Nomad, this traveller for whom the journey is a form of culture, who wants to arrive looking like no one else and to travel in complete control. The 96Hrs is both promises kept in one object.
Last question. After all the discarded drawings — was it worth it?
Every object we make now descends from that struggle. Throwing away a design you have loved for weeks is a small grief, truly. But beauty is not a decoration you add at the end; it is what remains when everything false has been removed. The 96Hrs taught the Maison that lesson before the Maison properly existed. So yes. The pursuit of beauty is expensive in drawings. It is the only pursuit I know that repays the cost.
The 96Hrs cabin case is available in Gold, Silver, Black and Cabernet. Maison Philippe Montagne — Avant-Garde Luxury Bags. Pour le Voyage.
further reading:
Mix + Match MPM 96Hrs in Venice
The story behind the MPM 96Hrs suitcase. Eau-Forte Engraving & the Compass Star