Montblanc is forging quite the relationship with director Wes Anderson, who has now created two memorable short films for the German maker of pens, watches and leather goods.
The first, featuring Anderson himself and actors Rupert Friend and Jason Schwartzman, had the three protagonists up a mountain, jockeying for the audience’s attention and then sitting down to write silently. The second swaps Schwartzman for Michael Cera, and sees this trio embark on a typically Andersonesque, stylised fake train journey.
Accompanying them is what Friend describes as ‘the new Montblanc portable writing table’, an ingenious leather bag with a zip-out, fold-down front that functions as a writing desk, and which holds a host of writing accessories, such as pens and a notebook, as well as a watch.
While this is a briefcase style and comes in khaki corteccia leather with a motif that suggests tree bark, there is also a matching handbag model in a sand colour. Both feature a hand-applied sfumato effect and have the clean and elegant lines that have come to characterise Montblanc’s luggage and bags. The handbag is similarly designed to hold desk items, with loops to fix pens in place and leather straps to hold papers and a notebook.
Montblanc’s creative director, Marco Tomasetta, has combined the firm’s heritage of creating writing instruments with its more contemporary foray into the world of luggage and leather goods in these ingenious pieces, which the company describes as ‘lifelong companions for personal discovery’.
Anderson talks in the film of ‘a time to reflect, to reconnect, to contemplate, to put pen to paper, to create’, and certainly one of Tomasetta’s aims is to encourage people to write by hand. These leather bags for travellers might just succeed in doing that.
Writing traveller briefcase, £2,175; handbag, £2,175; montblanc.com
Words by Peter Howarth; photography by Giuseppe Macor
Peter Howarth has been the style director of British GQ and the editor of Arena, British Esquire and Man About Town. He is the co-founder and CEO of London creative agency SHOW and managing director of Secret Trips
