The Lost Art of Luggage Labels

What’s the modern-day version of a travel trunk? When as a college student I began traveling abroad, I stuck found labels on a handsome green leatherbound sketchbook I carried everywhere I went: to the floor of the Sistine Chapel, on a sailboat to the Great Barrier Reef, to the top floor of a vertiginously situated Hong Kong dim sum palace. The book’s interior was populated with personal drawings, the exterior with colorful graphic representations by others. When I browse the beat-up volume today, its leaves falling to pieces, the stickers still speak, and memories surface: Belikin Beer (the national -- and very watery -- beer of Belize), I Love Shanghai (in homage to the iconic I Love NY design, picked up in the Chinese city’s gritty, up-and-coming artists’ neighborhood), an Art Deco rendition of the Matterhorn’s craggy shark-tooth outline. For me, the book was the backpacker’s version of the pocket travel trunk, and its existence allows me to hold its contents in my mind still.

Our travel is more transient these days, at least physically speaking; the documentation of our journeys less tangible, more digital. When we dig out our luggage for a trip, we think of TSA regulations and packing light; we don’t allow much time for falling down the rabbit-hole of memories that a chance glimpse of an old, well-traveled suitcase can ideally inspire.