Using:

I travel with as few things a possible. Before I had my Alstermo Bruk hand-made, hard-case carryon, I managed to stuff stuff for international trips into my laptop bag.

Impressed?

Given that, I usually don’t bother bring a razor, as any decent hotel’ll have one. But this USB travel shaver was just too amusing. The USB-powered shaver lights up bright blue when you plug into into your MacBook…

Missing:

Did you miss me as much as I missed you?

I’ve returned from roadtripping across Los Angeles, Sedona, the Grand Canyon, and Vegas. And back. Finally.

I fell in love with the desert palette’s seamlessness: how the sand smudges into the dusty pink sky, which melts into the purple-blue of the creeping night, which dissolves into the smoke-black mountains to the east, with silhouettes that echo the outlines of burning clouds in the west…

The Grand Canyon was unbelievable, but Sedona’s beauty is better: it has a scale you can grasp, with buildings formed for pleasure, instead of bowing to a giant slash in the earth.

We stayed at L’Auberge de Sedona Resort, which I picked for its dining room on the creek. It’s those unnaturally white tablecloths against the muddy creek that sold me. Nature is best as a contrast to the urbane…

Using:

Normally I stuff a few silk racerback tank dresses and some Marlies Dekkers undies into an old kimono bag from college, but I thought I’d give these Travel Space bags a go for this week’s Grand Canyon-Las Vegas road trip.

When your hand-crafted, hard-case luggage is really a fancy cardboard box from Sweden, fancy Ziploc bags are necessary…

Wanting:

I hardly romanticize life before electronic mail, the flying bus, the horseless carriage.

But there’s something romantic about a train ride, about a process of traveling outside of carefully placing your Giuseppes in a security tray, a journey that includes holding on to private packages like this  Manufactum cardboard hat box.

Hugging a hatbox on a train is so seductively innocent.

Espesh if you stash your Marlies Dekkers panties in it…

Using:

I take my Alstermo Bruk luggage everywhere, and people love the leather-trimmed retro trunk. A lady I just met at a photography show asked me if I had an orange suitcase — she’d noticed me in JFK airport seasons ago.

But as glam as hand-crafted, hard-case luggage is, you know what? Whether it’s James Bond’s Globetrotter attache or the Swedish royal family’s Alstermo luggage, it’s really just a fancy cardboard box.

Which I dig.

So I ordered this Manufactum cardboard attache, a Czech-made briefcase that cost less than Globetrotter’s four figures and Alstermo’s three. For fifty bucks, it’s the perfect home for the Hackintosh netbook I bought off Craigslist, and a spare silk jersey tank dress. What else do you really need…

Wanting

I love how London is littered with gentlemen’s gear: briefcases built to outlast grandsons, sterling silver flasks daintier than the ladies who shouldn’t use them, and leather cases crafted as carefully as the cigars they’re meant to hold. This Kiki James military wet pack reminds me of a Fortnum & Mason leather watch roll I wanted to buy for my toiletries. Handmade and styled after an early 20th century Brit army officer kit, the leather military wet pack can be personalized with your initials. That’s so much more choice than monogrammed luggage…