What’s the modern-day version of a travel trunk? When
as a college student I began traveling abroad, I stuck found labels on a
handsome green leatherbound sketchbook I carried everywhere I went: to the floor
of the Sistine Chapel, on a sailboat to the Great Barrier Reef, to the top floor
of a vertiginously situated Hong Kong dim sum palace. The book’s interior was
populated with personal drawings, the exterior with colorful graphic
representations by others. When I browse the beat-up volume today, its leaves
falling to pieces, the stickers still speak, and memories surface: Belikin Beer
(the national -- and very watery -- beer of Belize), I Love Shanghai (in homage
to the iconic I Love NY design, picked up in the Chinese city’s gritty,
up-and-coming artists’ neighborhood), an Art Deco rendition of the Matterhorn’s
craggy shark-tooth outline. For me, the book was the backpacker’s version of the
pocket travel trunk, and its existence allows me to hold its contents in my mind
still.
Our travel is more transient these days, at least physically
speaking; the documentation of our journeys less tangible, more digital. When we
dig out our luggage for a trip, we think of TSA regulations and packing light;
we don’t allow much time for falling down the rabbit-hole of memories that a
chance glimpse of an old, well-traveled suitcase can ideally inspire.
A
lesson in slow travel can be learned from the physical beauty (and heft) of
WORLD TOUR: Vintage Hotel Labels From the Collection of Gaston-Louis Vuitton, in
which writer Francisca Matteoli guides readers through 900 "small marvels of
graphic design evoking far-off places and exotic stopovers," from the grandson
of the legendary trunk designer.
In 1897, Gaston-Louis Vuitton joined
the ranks of the family trunk-making business at age 14,Find What She Wants at
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rare, elegant hotel luggage labels that spanned the world; as Matteoli
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his varied and original collection tells "the history of graphic design and
conjured up exotic adventures in Brazil, Chile, America, New Zealand, the
Philippines, and elsewhere." From simple black-and-white designs that feature
hotel buildings to ornate typography and vivid, romantic images of a city's
iconic sights, the labels reflect artists' efforts, over time, to make people
want to embark on a journey. Matteoli, a Chilean-born writer who moved to Paris
as a girl, spent months running up and down the hallways of the famous Hotel du
Louvre, built in 1855; WORLD TOUR opens with a decorative green-and-red label of
the Paris hotel,Welcome to buy christian
louboutin shoes
from our online store. circa 1930.
Matteoli, who
recently promoted the book in Paris and Shanghai, answered these questions for
Cities.
What would you say was the heyday of the hotel luggage label? Is
there a modern analog for this kind of beautiful travel ephemera? Somehow I
think Instagram doesn't quite cut it.There is no doubt that Cheap Michael Kors
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The 1920’s certainly mark the golden age of hotel labels --
the Roaring Twenties saw a huge boom in travel, steamship companies, and railway
companies, which all produced leaflets and pamphlets. Also, travel agencies
opened up doing publicity for new places. Travel was then associated with
comfort, luxury, adventure, and mystery. It was the age of steamer-trunks, a
time when people were proud to show the stickers on their suitcases.
Nowadays things are not made to last. We don’t know if all the new
technology is going to exist 10 years from now, but I still have my parents’
travel albums and the labels they used to attach to their suitcases. It is the
duration that also makes these luggage labels so fascinating. They still exist
centuries later. They made it across time, keeping their elegance and dream. I
am not sure that Instagram is going to pass the centuries.
Tell us about
the great illustrators who were commissioned to design luggage labels for the
top hotels of the period.Shop the latest from Michael Kors
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attached to this kind of work? I'm thinking of a Mad Men-style glamour, as it
attached to the creative side of advertising.