Hotel Retro: Vintage Luggage Labels from Tokyo to Buenos Aires
Chart a nostalgic trip around the globe with removable stickers featuring iconic luggage labels from the Letterform Archive collection.
From Berlin to Gibraltar to Penang to Calcutta, the book evokes a deep nostalgia for the golden age of 20th-century travel—one populated by luxury trains, hotel matchbooks and well-dressed bellboys. Faithfully reproduced and smartly arranged in a hardcover book, this selection of 330 labels allows travel enthusiasts to stick, share and delight in designs from an era of trunk luggage and grand hotels.
“The luggage label collection at Letterform Archive in San Francisco numbers in the thousands,” the editors write. “Many of its specimens came from a local source: San Francisco’s own historic Huntington Hotel, a luxury accommodation first opened in 1922, where a binder of treasured labels was assembled by a concierge whose name has also slipped from record. Acquired by the Archive as examples of appealing type and lettering from across the globe, these pieces of print ephemera attest to advertising’s early heyday, when stunning illustration, inventive letterforms and novel color printing made every surface—no matter how small—a vehicle for transport to a far-off land, if only in the imagination.”
Published by Letterform Archive Books, 2026
Hardcover, 240 pages, 300 color images, 6.75 × 8.5 inches
ISBN: 979-8-98-914232-3