TUMI is a global leader in premium travel, business, and lifestyle accessories, defined by technical innovation, durability, and functional design. Founded in 1975, the brand pioneered the use of ballistic nylon and later introduced Tegris®, a proprietary aerospace-grade composite, establishing a material DNA rooted in performance, protection, and precision engineering.

Brand Positioning
Its communication centers on momentum and progress—expressed through the collaboration with McLaren Formula 1 Team and the tagline Life in Forward Motion—positioning TUMI around performance and constant movement rather than heritage- or fashion-led luxury.

Visual research board

Chromatic and material translation into spatial language

CONCEPT

The concept connects TUMI with the urban DNA of Milan, translating the city’s contemporary material and chromatic language into a refined spatial narrative. It speaks to a cosmopolitan, design-aware audience through a dialogue between engineered precision and Milanese understatement.

The project positions TUMI as an insider’s brand: discreet, refined, and attuned to contemporary urban culture. It proposes a more mature, design-conscious identity for the global traveler — cosmopolitan, precise, and deeply connected to the places they move through.

Architectural cues reference Milan’s infrastructural layers—suspended wires, rail lines, and hidden geometries—echoing the city’s rhythm and constant movement. Material choices reinterpret TUMI’s engineering identity through understated architectural surfaces, avoiding overt branding.

These elements are abstracted and reinterpreted into a spatial composition that celebrates connection, movement, and flow, echoing both the functional intelligence of TUMI and the structural clarity of Milan.

The retail space operates as an installation, where TUMI’s engineered craft is enhanced through curated display systems that elevate each product into an autonomous, almost sculptural object rather than a conventional retail item.

The subtly curved geometry of the display elements was conceived to counterbalance the material’s inherent solidity, introducing a sense of lightness that echoes TUMI’s ongoing exploration of advanced, lightweight performance materials.

Drawing from the layered and suspended systems of Milan’s urban infrastructure, the lighting installation translates structural logic into an abstracted and atmospheric spatial gesture.