via WWD

The four-piece capsule tote collection will be available next month. 

By Vicki M. Young on March 30, 2017

Tumi has collaborated with British luxury swimwear brand Orlebar Brown for a contemporary travel tote collection for the weekend getaway.

The exclusive capsule — Tumi by Orlebar Brown — has four pieces: a large navy tote; a small khaki tote and a printed tote in both small and large. All four have a coordinating navy interior, and each one features a waterproof rubber base. Other features include leather carry handles; a strap tuck lock closure; a back slip pocket; a hanging luggage tag, and the Tumi-owned Add-a-Bag strap on back. The unisex totes are priced between $295 and $395, and will be available next month at select Tumi and Orlebar Brown stores, as well as on each firm’s web site.

The collaboration features a photographic print on the canvas style and drew inspiration from Slim Aarons’ iconic pictures of Riviera and Palm Beach life during the Sixties.

Victor Sanz, Tumi’s creative director, said, “The conversation with Orlebar Brown began about a year ago. They were admirers of our brand, and we were admirers of their brand. They are one of the top players in their category.”

Tumi does periodic collaborations. Last year it did a collaboration with Heineken. This year’s collaboration with Orlebar Brown is the first it had done with a swimwear brand. Sanz added that joining forces made for a fun and easy collaboration since both brands “share many of the same clientele.…This was a great way for two brands talking to the same type of customer to engage [with] them.”

Adam Brown, the founder of Orlebar Brown, said the collaboration was about taking two brands where the companies each have an “identifiable DNA to take into a different world. Tumi is all about travel, and we’re all about travel as well, but we come to it from different ways. They are known for black, nylon ballistic travel bags. They’ve never been to a beach or on a boat. We’re always in a sunny climate; we never go into the everyday type of world. [Yet] we both have this thread defined by travel.”

Brown added that the two brands thought it would be interesting to see where the “journey” would take the firms and what that might mean for “travel” because it was also important that the “bags have the signature of both brands.”

Orlebar Brown has done collaborations before, mostly with artists and graphic designers. Brown said of the one they did with British men’s wear brand Gieves & Hawkes: “With them it was all about tailoring. The collaboration with Tumi is an evolution of that. We have to have the same values, whether in travel or tailoring or at the beach. It’s just introduced in a different way.”