The Story Behind the MPM R.P.T | Maison Philippe Montagne
There is a moment every frequent traveller knows well. You are at the gate, or at the check-in desk, or in the back of a taxi on the way to the airport, and you need three things at once: your passport, your boarding pass, and your phone. They are in three different places. You put the phone down to find the passport, you put the passport down to find the boarding pass, and by the time you have all three in your hand the person at the desk is looking at you with the particular patience of someone who has seen this happen ten thousand times before.
I have been that person. Many times. And that is more or less where the R.P.T began.
The name is German. Reisepass Tasche. Passport pouch. I had been living with the problem long enough to know exactly what I needed, so I did what I always do when starting a new product: I checked the facts first. Passport dimensions. Credit card dimensions. The size of a flat charger. The size of a power bank. The size of an in-ear earphone case. A smartphone. I wrote them all down and then sat with the question of how to stack them, how to make them all accessible without turning the bag inside out every time you needed one thing, and how to make the result look like something you would actually want to carry rather than something that looks like a glorified fanny pack.
The constraint was the pleasure of it, as constraints usually are. I wanted the R.P.T to fit in a jacket side pocket or a chest pocket. That meant the width could not exceed 110 millimetres. Once you have that number, everything else follows. You work outward from the smallest possible footprint and you ask yourself at every step: does this still fit? Does this still work? Does this still look right?
What came out of that process is a bag 110 millimetres wide, 225 millimetres high and 38 millimetres deep, which is admittedly a little on the wide side, but then you will have your smartphone, your flat charger, your passport, your boarding pass, fourteen card slots, a zip pocket for keys and coins and SIM cards, and two flat pockets for cables and earphones. And a rounded back compartment for a power bank, a charger adapter, or whatever the journey requires. The storage capacity surprises people every time. It surprised me, and I designed it.
The shape is a rounded rectangle, which is not an obvious choice for a bag.
Most bags are either rigidly rectangular or softly formless. The R.P.T sits between those two things, structured enough to hold its form, rounded enough to feel like it belongs in your hand rather than on a shelf. The front face is smooth box calf, the back and strap are grained taurillon, which is the same dual-leather combination we use in the Ristretto. It is an MPM house gesture at this point, the contrast between the two leathers, the smooth and the grained, which gives the bag its depth without any surface decoration.
You can carry it five ways. On the shoulder. Crossbody. Around the neck. At the belt. Or simply in the hand, using the flat handle at the back.
And when you arrive, it goes directly into the hotel safe, with everything you need for the next departure already inside it, organised, ready, not scattered across the room.
In control. Organised. Feel good factor clicked on high. That was the brief I gave myself. I think we got there.
The 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