Is this a Real Vintage Rimowa?

I’ve been obsessed with RIMOWA since I decided on doing that traveling livestyle all those vloggers are into. Rimowas are basically aluminum cases that get dented as you travel. Put a few stickers on there and boom you have a lovely travel patina of sorts. Now-a-days Rimowa sells carry ons and check ins that pretty much match any other except for their distinctive aluminum exterior. You can even buy them without that exterior but I wouldn’t do that, if you can afford a thousand dollar plus carry on bag you can afford the extra weight fee. The new ones are nice and sturdy but that’s not the one I want. Each Rimowa boutique has a display with a donated vintage Rimowa suticase, not for sale, I asked. The look of the suitcase appealed to me much more than the bulky modern ones with wheels and extendable handles (convenient as they may be). So I took to ebay.

That’s when I found this. A 1970s-ish? Vintage Rimowa suitcase for $300 with shipping. For those of you that know Rimowa, that’s actually pretty cheap! And it’s in good condition. Now for the question you always have to ask with luxury items on ebay: is this real?

Well I contacted Rimowa and they told me they don’t authenticate suitcases. I then asked them for an archive I could perhaps look this model up in, they told me they didn’t have one. Rimowa if you’re reading this I know you have a $100 book for sale with photos of old Rimowas don’t tell me you don’t have an archive.

So it was up to me. I took a real close look at the logo, it’s consistent with their older design. The handle looked familiar, it was the same handle as a background on their website (the featured image of this post). But that wasn’t good enough. So I took to their instagram and scrolled… and scrolled… and scrolled until…

Ah hah! I think? They have the same blue lines around the side and the same latch locks. The center lock of the center suitcase is off. So close to a perfect match. Would it really be out of the question for a company to change lock designs over a decade though? Did Rimowa ever use this lock? Well I googled vintage Rimowas and scrolled… and scrolled and scrolled… no really this took hours… until…

A match on the lock! A post from another blogger looking through a Rimowa exhibition. Though the ebay Rimowa doesn’t have that handle or that exterior.

So either someone frankensteined a fake Rimowa by looking up very obscure pictures of real vintage Rimowas or this Rimowa was made before the handle update and after the lock update.

I pulled the trigger and bought it. The seller said it came from the 80s but I think it was from the 60-70s when they had the old handle. Fittingly the suitcase also made an extensive trip shipping from the Kiev to my home in Denver. I stole the Turkish cargo sticker from the packaging to put on the suitcase. I bought a few Rimowa stickers as well. They’re beautiful but so expensive, $10 a sticker! If I were to purchase every city I’ve been to on their sticker collection it would cost me $160… in stickers.

And here it is! Ready to join me on many more adventures. The first stickers are Orange County, Madrid, and Paris.