Customer Reviews

Packing: Bags to Trunks (Chic Simple Components)

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This little book is packed with useful information.It contains tips a traveller can really use- from selecting the right bag,to avoiding wrinkles. The photos selected are a visual treat, and the book is beautifully designed.

As with all Chic Simple books, this little book is filled with good advice, beautiful pictures, interesting quotes and a nice attitude. It addresses questions such as what should I bring, how much should I bring and why should I bring anything at all? It also discusses different kinds of bags, and when they are appropriate. Not only is this book about packing for travels - it is about how to pack to commute to work or going to the gym as well.

Details about how to pack clothes and how to build a travel wardrobe are also included, plus some very good lists to use as starting points, as well as a packing chart to personalize.

I traveled massively during my childhood, and after an impasse of several years, I have started travelling again. I love travelling, the farther the better, so it is only logical that I would refer to a volume that would illustrate the joys of travelling along with the wisdom of proper packing. "If you want to get away from it all, don't take it all with you" (page 49), claim Kim Johnson-Gross and Jeff Stone in this marvelous mini-volume, designed to be carried as a reference on all our trips without any major inconvenience.

The Chic-Simple collection is a very stylish, (i.e. chic) series of books that was launched over a decade ago, and which covered everything having to do with the minimalist but elegant lifestyle of the nineties. In this small volume, Johnson-Gross and Stone provide ample advice on preparing your necessities, from our day-to-day commuting to the long trips of several weeks. Precisely, they point out the three most important points about packing on page 22, them being:

1st: make a checklist

2nd: determine the best type of bag for the trip (this is one I mostly overlook, but now I will not)

3rd: compile a list of options to the basics in one's travelling wardrobe

This is a very well produced little book, with excellent photographs that illustrate good packing but also excellent quality luggage and accessories. Each photograph is referenced in the back resource directory, in case the reader should be interested in acquiring them. Perhaps the book's most useful tool is the packing chart on page 90, a sort of daily wardrobe organizer where the traveler can plan ahead on their clothing, to the last detail, for any events in their itinerary - especially useful for business or rather more formal trips, where a schedule would be "de rigueur". The book also includes a list of worldwide address of the major fashion houses and luggage manufacturers which, due to the fact that these are houses like Hermès and Louis Vuitton, their locations are perennial, even though the book was printed at the beginning of the nineties. A truly timeless resource.