Cat in the Bag - Symmetry Magazine

Despite the enormous variety of luggage options available, Adam McCulloch wonders why you only ever see the ubiquitous black bag making its way around the carousel.

When you’re standing at the lost luggage counter at the airport, no one asks, “What colour is your bag?” Everyone assumes it’s black. They simply slap a laminated card on the counter and ask you to point to your bag’s closest relative. The thousand mug-shots staring back depict every imaginable variation — short, skinny fat, tall – all without exception, a shadowy shade of charcoal. The black bag has become the ubiquitous travel essential. But why? Surely there are other options  – aren’t there?

Of course there are plenty of colours to choose from if you care to look. Take Samsonite for example. They make luggage in blue, burgundy, purple and a host of cheery hues. My wife in fact managed to buy me a Samsonite backpack in a joyous pink which is enormously useful while hiking: I can now hear the grizzly bears guffawing from a good mile away. Even more mirth inducing is Samsonite’s range which resembles tigers complete with ears and a face. A bag like that wouldn’t get lost in transit. “What did it look like?” they’d ask at lost luggage. “ A tiger,” I’d say and wait for a response. At very least it would draw a smile. At worst I’d be treated to a strip search to look for the remaining hallucinogens.

Black bags might look the same but spend several hours watching them on the carousel, as I have, and you soon realise that they’re not. Skid plates, inline skate wheels and reinforced corners all denote a bag of high finish. Some, like the Victorinox E-Motion 360°, grow wings and a spine and become a fully fledged backpack. Look closely at the suitcases and you begin to recognise some of the super tough fabric that only quality luggage is made from. Travelpro make theirs from Dupont Teflon-coated microballistic nylon stain-resistant fabric, while Hartman’s much catchier descriptor is 1050 denier ballistic nylon. Teflon? Ballistic? I suspect the indestructible black box flight recorder is just a tape recorder in a suitcase.

If your case does go to God consider investing in a hard suitcase — but think long and hard. You’ll weather all manner of evil looks from soft-bag passengers as your suitcase pummeled theirs to the shape of a fortune cookie on the carousel. Hard cases (or oysters as they’re known in the biz) are the Hummer of the suitcase world. One manufacturer, I kid you not, do their testing by driving over them. A grander statement might be a nice Louis Vuitton travel set. Unfortunately no one wealthy enough to afford such bags would ever fly commercial airlines so the expensive status symbol would be dismissed as a cheap rip-off.

Luggage ultimately is about conformity. The carousel is a black tie ball for bags and the uniform dress code makes it easier to make a statement with a slight variation. Ribbons, sticker, characteristic scuff marks are all the things that denote status. Nowadays with reports of baggage handler theft on the rise, it seems what the black bag brigade are saying is, “Please, steal someone else’s. They’ve got an iPod.

Thankfully there is an easiest solution to black bag paranoia: a nice long road trip. Now doesn’t that sound like fun?
 
Words by Adam McCulloch. Originally published in Symmetry Magazine. The format has been altered to suit Tumblr.