The Object
The metal suitcase has, for a century, belonged to a single silhouette. A grooved shell, riveted corners, a cold gleam at the carousel. Rimowa made it, and for years anyone who wanted the look paid the German premium or went without. Carl Friedrik has now built its own version, and priced it to make you reconsider the habit.
The London house is younger than it looks. Two Swedish brothers, Niklas and Mattis Oppermann, started it in 2013 selling leather laptop cases and briefcases under a different name. Luggage arrived only in 2019. If you have watched Succession or The White Lotus, you have seen their hard-shell cases without registering the maker. This first move into aluminium is the logical end of that climb, the material every serious luggage brand eventually has to answer.
The Carry-on is an anodised aluminium alloy, 41 litres, 4.9 kilograms, wrapped at the edges in vegetable-tanned leather that comes in black, cognac and a dark brown. Bespoke steel rivets. Steel-reinforced corners. Wheels from Hinomoto of Japan, the small firm that quietly supplies the good rollers to most of the trade. A lifetime warranty. It costs 945 dollars, roughly half what the case it echoes will ask.
Pick it up and the mid-century intent is plain. The grooves sit shallower than Rimowa's, the leather softens the industrial edge, and the whole thing wants to read like something from a 1960s first-class cabin rather than a spacecraft. Restraint as a design position. That is the Scandinavian half of the story showing through the London address.
Aluminium does not forgive. It records every airport it has passed through, and a certain traveller wants exactly that.
This is the real argument for metal over polycarbonate, and Carl Friedrik leans on it hard. The shell will dent and scuff and go matte at the corners. Left alone, it earns a patina that reads as mileage rather than damage. A plastic case only ever looks tired.
The timing is deliberate. The brand talks about a return to the golden age of travel, and the logic underneath is sound enough: buyers are purchasing fewer travel pieces and spending more on each, backing the ones built to last. A metal case meant to outlive several plastic ones fits that behaviour precisely.
Whether the underdog can unseat the incumbent is another matter. Rimowa has ninety years and a logo people recognise across a terminal. What Carl Friedrik offers is the same grammar of travel, honestly made, at a figure that no longer feels like a toll. For a first metal case, it is a serious opening bid.
Aluminium continues to set the benchmark for luggage endurance. The collection represents years of development and testing, employing everything we've learned since launching our inaugural line in 2019.
Mattis Oppermann, co-founder, Carl Friedrik
