To design its Tegra-Lite luggage, Tumi enlisted plastics manufacturer Milliken, whose durable composites can be found in everything from football gear to racecar interiors. While high-tech collaborations are nothing new for the brand, working with Milliken’s woven polypropylene Tegris thermoplastic quite literally broke the mold. Since Tumi’s traditional process of pressing and stretching the composite to form rounded corners distorted Tegris’s visible lattice, the team had to devise “a highly engineered form of cutting and folding the sheets,” says Alan Krantzler, who oversaw its development. The result: smooth, contoured luggage that’s 65-percent lighter than fiberglass composites and built to take a beating.

Tumi
Photos: Courtesy of Tumi