Apparently, I Dress My Luggage for the Season

I want to establish that first, because Tiny Luxuries becomes very boring if every slightly extravagant thing has to be reverse-engineered into a necessity.

I did not need a second set of luggage.

The pink cases are perfectly capable of transporting jumpers. The brown ones would cope admirably with a summer dress. Neither set is aware of the season.

This is entirely me.

I like seasons. I like the moment the house starts to feel different in autumn. I like changing scents, little rituals and the things I reach for as the year moves on. Apparently, at some point, that logic expanded all the way to my luggage.

Spring and summer: pink.

Autumn and winter: brown and gold.

It makes no practical difference to the journey.

It makes a difference to me.

Travel is full of anticipation.

The booking. The restaurant you save weeks beforehand. Looking at the weather far too often. Deciding what to pack. The slightly optimistic outfit that only works if the forecast improves by four degrees.

For me, the suitcase has somehow become part of that ritual.

When I pull out the brown set for an autumn trip, it already feels right. Warm, slightly nostalgic, a little more dressed-up than luggage has any reason to be.

It makes the trip feel as though it has started before we have left the house.

That is the kind of thing I mean when I talk about a tiny luxury.

It doesn't have to transform your life. It doesn't even have to be particularly rational.

Sometimes it just makes a completely ordinary part of life — in this case, putting socks into a suitcase — more enjoyable.

This would all be relatively contained if SUITSUIT had not also made a dark green version that I keep seeing.

I love it.

Every time I come across it, the same thought appears:

Shall I?

So far, I haven't.

A third luggage set is difficult even for me to present as a reasonable logistical decision. A set is somewhere around €350, from memory, and I suspect Bas might have a small heart attack if another cabin case and large suitcase suddenly appeared in the house.

He would also, annoyingly, have a point.

There is a line somewhere between this makes me happy and Esther has accidentally opened a suitcase shop.

I am currently trying to remain on the correct side of it.

The dark green set is not helping.

There is a particular kind of adulthood in which we become very good at explaining purchases.

It was on sale. It is an investment. I will use it for years. The cost per wear is actually excellent. The old one needed replacing.

Sometimes those things are true and useful.

But sometimes I think the explanation can simply be: I really like it.

That doesn't mean buying everything you like. Wanting something and buying it are still two different things — as the dark green suitcases are currently demonstrating.

It just means I don't think every beautiful, unnecessary thing needs to disguise itself as a practical decision before it is allowed into a life.

My brown luggage does exactly the same job as my pink luggage.

I prefer the brown in autumn.

That is enough for me.

I think this may be one of my favourite kinds of luxury: the choices that are so specific to a person that somebody who knows them hears about it and says, of course you do.

Of course I have seasonal suitcases.

Of course I wear an expensive niche perfume while working from home in Miffy slippers.

Of course there are impossibly high Louboutins in my wardrobe even though I wear heels far less than I used to.

None of these things is a template for how anybody else should live.

That is precisely why I like them.

A home — and really a life — becomes interesting through the decisions that would make absolutely no sense in a universal list of recommendations.

The mug you always choose although the set doesn't match. The cheap lip product you have used for twenty years. The ridiculous Christmas decoration you look forward to unpacking. The particular glass that makes an ordinary drink taste better for no scientific reason whatsoever.

Or, apparently, luggage with a seasonal dress code.

These things don't make a life luxurious because they are expensive.

They make it personal.

And I think that is much more interesting.

At the time of writing: no.

Please admire my restraint.

I already own two beautiful, functional sets and I genuinely enjoy both of them. A third would cross the line from a little unnecessary pleasure into a lot of unnecessary storage space.

Probably.

Ask me again if SUITSUIT ever discontinues the dark green.

For now, autumn arrives, the brown cases come out, and I am delighted all over again.

Nobody needs seasonal luggage.

But mine makes me happy before the trip has even begun.

Sometimes that is the whole point.