Neville Wakefield Collaborates With RIMOWA

To commemorate the opening of their first New York City store, RIMOWA has commissioned artist and curator Neville Wakefield to create a limited-edition installation of the creative suitcase styles bearing his creative mark. Using the luggage as a blank slate, Wakefield will re-work the styles by experimenting with various combinations of finishes and interiors.

“The challenge of the Rimowa aluminum luggage line is simply how to improve on a design that is already proven. My response was to focus on the materials themselves and in particular the way in which the metal records its life and travel history in its surface. The aluminum in the existing range of Topas suitcases is anodized, a process that oxidizes and hardens the surface to make it more resistant to corrosion and wear. What I wanted to do was create a surface that more literally reflected its surroundings. By electro-polishing the raw case material to a mirror finish we created something in which you could see the outside world, both as a reflection and as surface that was sufficiently delicate to record the effects of travel and even of touch. We wanted the contents of the luggage to remain mysterious and personal even as its form reflects the everyday world that we live in. The inspiration came equally from John McCraken’s polished sculptures with their allusion to mysterious content and the automotive world where polishing is used to fetishize the dynamics of speed. Hopefully the cases will carry with them a little bit of both: a form that bears the imprint of its journeys and the mysterious creative content they will bring from Brazil to Miami Basel where they will first be shown.”

Here, we take a look at the long awaited collaboration.