What happens when a Louis Vuitton meets a baggage carousel
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE NEVERFULL — A travel note on Gate C14
I didn’t kick a puppy; I just set my Louis Vuitton tote on the floor. The way the women looked at me, you’d think I’d drawn a pentagram on the carpet with a lipstick from the wrong price tier.
The bag made a soft thud, and three heads snapped up in synchrony — faces registering horror, pity, and the faint hope I was kidding.
Neverfull. Nevermind.
My sister bought the thing in Milan almost two decades ago. Marble floors, glass cases, angels humming in Italian. She was the high-flier; I just inherited the luggage. To her it was an heirloom. To me, it’s a large rectangle of treated canvas with straps — excellent tensile strength, terrible theology.
Whenever she decides to unload one of her “unused” luxury items, unused in a sense that it IS unused, it’s just sitting there in her wide closet that looks like a full armor arsenal of designer weapons. Pick your weapon, I happen to choose that cornucopia for hiding goodies.
When I travel, the Neverfull earns its name and then some. It’s always full — snacks, laptop, toiletries, bottled water, emergency hoodie, balled socks imitating grenades, maybe a paperback wedged between guilt and deodorant. I haul it like carry-on luggage, shoulder digging a permanent dent, bag expanding like a theological argument.
The crowd watches the exorcism unfold. You can see the thought bubbles:
“It must be a knockoff. No one treats the real thing like that.”
Sorry, saints. It’s real. Bought in Milan, survived more than ten years of airports, grocery runs, and emotional turbulence. The patina is called “experience.”
Luxury, it turns out, is allergic to evidence of use.
Authenticity now comes shrink-wrapped.
The faithful keep their bags perched on chairs, whispering prayers to prevent scuff marks.
Me? I feed mine peanuts and red-eye coffee.
I’m not rebellious, just awkward. I never learned the choreography — the correct way to hover, gesture, or balance status on my lap without spilling my humanity on it.
So, I cinched the sides as I stood up — the canvas sighing like it knew the drill — not that it helps — heft it like the world’s most glamorous duffel, and keep walking.
Neverfull, sure. But also never fragile. Which is more than I can say for most of the congregation.