Man's Guide To Travel Luggage - Weekender - Suitcases - Backpacks - Messenger - Dopp
Bags
Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today, I'm doing a video in support of my article over at The Art of Manliness and this
is a man's guide to luggage.
If you haven't already and you're watching this on YouTube, make sure to subscribe.
Make sure to like the video.
And if you want to learn more about me and my company, I've got tons of links down.
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On this video, I want to get right into luggage, so I'm going to go over quite a few pieces.
I pulled these out of my personal collection, so some of them will not be the ones featured
in the article.
If you want more information, go check out the article, it's awesome.
I'm going to link you to it down below, but in this one, I had to do with what I have
here.
Without further ado, let's jump into it.
The first bag I'm going to start with here is the ever familiar backpack.
You've seen it a hundred thousand times and you'll probably continue to see it, a very
useful piece of gear.
Two straps make it traditional, make it a backpack.
In addition, this expands open.
It has multiple bases in which you can put a laptop.
You can put cushioning for a laptop, put your books.
This was a backpack I picked up when I was a student at the University of Texas.
It came in a very dark, black color, and a pretty professional backpack, but kind of
like jeans here.
You can only make it so professional.
So unless you're a student or unless you're going out on a weekend trip, a backpack is
-- well, you don't want to use this in professional settings because it just screams student or
backpack, a messenger backpack.
This is made by a company called Crumpler.
Again, actually this is leftover from my student days.
I love this messenger backpack.
I could be riding a bike.
I could be waking across town and it's enough for me to carry my laptop.
It had a nice cushioned area in here.
They used the Velcro, which as you can hear, it definitely makes some sound.
It had brighter colors to it.
I was really drawn to the cushioning on this bag, but again, a casual piece of gear, you're
not going to want to use this in a professional setting.
Let's go ahead and start getting into the professional bags.
This is made by Saddleback Leather Company.
If you're watching this over here at The Art of Manliness or at Real Men Real Style, you're
pretty familiar.
I've talked about this company quite a bit.
This was a bag presented to me actually by Brett McKay.
Thank you, Brett and Kate.
I appreciate it.
Overall, it is a good, professional, simple briefcase.
However, because of the style, because of the ruggedness, the thickness of the leather,
the proportions and the hardiness build of it, it is more of a casual briefcase than
it is a dress briefcase.
I would want to wear this more with a sports jacket, perhaps odd trousers instead of a
suit, or actually just wearing casual clothing.
This would look good as well, but again, leather does definitely make this dressy, but because
of the lighter color, because of the thickness and because of the build and proportions,
this has a very rugged feel, which kind of delegates or pushes it down in the level of
formality.
In contrast, this is a briefcase by Maxwell Scott.
They're over in the UK and this is more of a dress briefcase, one that you could wear
with a suit.
As you can see, the leather isn't as heavy duty.
It's actually an Italian leather versus on the Saddleback that's a Mexican leather.
I'm not going to get into the leather details, but when you feel this one, it's got a shinier,
more delicate appearance.
It doesn’t mean it's any less rugged.
In fact, I know Maxwell Scott has a great guarantee and it's definitely a very solid
build, but when you open this up, you can see it has a lot more compartments.
This one is designed definitely for the businessmen in mind, so we don't see any flashy colors.
Everything is very much refined, again, the target customer, man with a suit, man with
a sports jacket, odd trousers.
You're not going to want to carry this bag with casual clothing.
It's just going to look out of place.
Oftentimes, bags don't come with these shoulder straps.
You don't have to use them.
These should come right off, so you just want to carry it, but the shoulder strap is nice
for those of you that are commuting and moving around and need a hand free.
This bag right here, I bring this up because there's a lot of ex-military or current active
duty military guys out there watching this.
This is great.
The duffel bag is a great bag.
When it comes to weight, I mean, it doesn’t get much better.
This weighs a pound so if the airline has a 50-pound limit, you can get in 49 pounds
of gear.
The problem with these types of bags is that as soon as a person sees them, they immediately
know a bit about you.
If you're flying into San Diego, you're going to see these everywhere because you've got
marines.
You've got sailors all over the place.
You could have somebody actually grab your bag because they all look the same, but a
great piece of gear if you need to move a lot.
You're not worried about it getting damaged.
Now let's talk about some hybrid pieces.
This is actually a carry-on piece of luggage, so like you've seen, it's wheeled right here.
I'm not against wheels.
I know I wrote about that in the article, but definitely there is a time and a place
for wheels.
It's also has the telescopic handle that comes out and goes right down.
This is an inexpensive bag.
There's much higher quality ones and usually what you're paying for in quality actually
has to do with this telescopic piece that comes out.
The lower quality bags, you're going to see this break very soon versus the higher quality
bags.
Usually, it lasts a bit longer.
Now, this is a hybrid bag because not only does it have room for your laptop, it's got
as much as probably one of those professional briefcases I just went over right here with
all your professional gear, but it also has room for your clothing.
So if you wanted to take one day's worth of clothes and change into that, you're going
to have room in there.
Let's talk about some more professional luggage, the Dopp kit.
I'm doing this a little bit out of order, but those of you who are familiar with the
Dopp kit, the reason you want to have a Dopp kit is that oftentimes, you've got aerosol
cans.
Well, it depends on how you're flying, but you want something that is going to be waterproof
and it's going to prevent any gels, any liquids if they spill from spreading throughout the
rest of your bag.
So you can feel the inside of this is actually waterproof, so I could even fill this up with
water.
That bad part is a lot of them, they're not going to be waterproof here at the top, so
it could leak out, but it's still going to give you a level of protection because when
you look at bags like this one -- this is a great overnight bag made by Blue Claw.
This is an amazing bag and this is also waterproof on the inside as well.
You can tell higher quality bags, they pay attention to those small details, but the
inside of it is almost completely empty.
There's one pocket right here which you can put your passport or something else in it
and protect it from everything else in there, but overall, you are just going to be filling
this bag up.
The details, this is an overnight bag.
I really like this bag because it doesn’t have the wheels, so it has a more elegant
look.
In addition, it's been fully reinforced, so this uses a rip-preventive type of material.
In addition, it's got these leather straps on the side, which not only make it a bit
more elegant, but they also provide support and prevent the bag from ripping open or if
it does get a tear.
In addition, you can look at the details such as the way the handles are attached.
Not only do we have the cross-sewing, but they're using a single stitch.
I can see that they're using a heavy-duty and in some areas they've even double-stitched,
gone into the same stitching, which is another sign of quality, and they've got a rivet right
in here.
Basically, they've reinforced this, so this is not coming off.
Saddleback, if you're familiar with that company, I just talked to them, they don't use any
zippers, but whenever you do see a company that use zippers, you want to make sure that
the zippers are high quality.
So when I look at this zipper, I can see that this is solid steel.
It's much thicker than many of the other ones I'm used to.
It is has a very sturdy zip to it.
This is a garment bag, again by Blue Claw, so the garment bag, underutilized in my opinion,
but if you're going to be moving a lot of suits, a lot of sports jackets, a lot of pairs
of trousers or dress shirts and you don't want to have to iron or they're already ironed,
the great part, you put them in your garment back and this one folds right over in an on
itself and boom, you can just carry this.
Most quality garments bags also have a lower pocket, so you can put additional material
in there, but very simple bags.
Finally, the one that you guys have seen all over airports, the simple carry-on.
Carry-on, usually we have two pockets, if not a few more, on the outside.
This one is usually for small electronic items.
This one is for books or other things.
And then on the inside, it is usually completely open.
I had a surprise bag in there, so we get to talk about another one.
It's pretty much empty and this is where you would put your clothing.
For a lot of guys, this works well.
If you're carrying a laptop, this is a bit difficult because you don't want to have to
open up your entire bag.
When buying a bag like this, again, look for the stitching.
Look to make sure there are rivets.
You don't want this handle coming off.
Pay attention to the quality of the wheel build.
For the higher quality bags, that's what they're usually -- lower quality bags, they usually
skimp on areas like this.
I can tell you that the zipper here is not nearly the same quality as on the Blue Claw
over there, although this one has worked for me for years.
A lot of other bags also have straps that go around and it will make sure they secure
even if the zipper pops open.
This one does not have it.
Again, the telescopic build, in higher quality bags, you're going to have usually less problems
with that.
Last but not least, this is the advantage of when you buy a set.
This bag, actually I would never have bought it by itself.
It actually came with the bag I just pointed out there and the nice part is it fits right
on there.
It's not really built for a laptop, but if you are carrying a lot of the small -- so
I travel with my family, I've got kids, so this is a great bag for carrying all the food
so I don't end up spending a whole lot of money there in the airport.
All right, that's what I've got.
If you'd like to see any individual pieces of video made for them, go ahead and let me
know in the comments and I'll try to do that.
Also, if you have a question about men's style, make sure to go to my new website, mensstyleqa.com.
It's a great Q&A website.
We've got over 200 great questions with over 200 answers.
I'm really focusing my energies over there.
YouTube comments, oftentimes people send me messages and they get lost.
Yeah, it's a pain to deal with, so I'd appreciate it if you've got a question about men's style
to go over to mensstyleqa.com.
All right, guys, I will see you in the next video.
Bye-bye.