Rimowa is a company defined by a single gesture: the parallel grooves running across an aluminium shell, unchanged in spirit since the 1950s. So it means something when the brand opens the year in leather and in a colour called Powder Blue, launched on 8 January. This is the house testing how far it can travel from its own metal.
The colour lands across three pieces, but the one that matters is the Distinct, described by Rimowa as its first-ever leather suitcase. The emblematic grooves are still there, pressed now into textured leather rather than stamped into aluminium, paired with palladium hardware and a monogrammed jacquard lining. It is a translation exercise: the brand's most recognisable line, rendered in a material it has never used for a full case.
The grooves survive the move from metal to leather; the question is whether the soul does.
Alongside it sits the Original Twist, where the familiar aluminium shell is trimmed in Powder Blue leather at the handles and corners, and a Personal crossbody that carries the colour into its strap and interior. The blue itself is pitched as a study in restraint, the brand reaching for renewal and calm rather than the high-visibility statements it has made elsewhere.
It has made those too, and recently. In April, Rimowa turned up the volume with neon Magenta and Orange on its polycarbonate Essential line, colour-matched shells drawn from Pop design, with the Groove leather range extended in orange. Read together, the two launches map the brand's current width: muted leather restraint in winter, saturated polycarbonate in spring.
Pricing, quoted in Japan at launch, ran to ¥542,300 for the Distinct Cabin. The Distinct is the piece to watch. A leather Rimowa is either a natural evolution or a contradiction in terms, and we suspect the answer depends entirely on how much the grooves ever meant to you.