Real Life Buyer's Guide

Real life intel from actual purchases. Rimowa, Mercedes Wagons, Whoop, Fuji X100vi and more.

I like to think this newsletter is about buying intelligence more than promoting mass consumption. Sure we all get excited and buy a bag or clothes that we don’t need sometimes, but overall it’s more important to use ACL to become a better consumer. That’s really my goal with all of this. You know how it goes — get the good stuff and skip the bad. Buy quality over everything. The problem now is that there’s just so much buying information out there and it’s hard to tell who is telling the truth.

I wanted to write about some trending things you might have seen around (the Apple Airpod Max headphones, Fuji X100vi or the Whoop) and some things that I really love (Rimowa, Mercedes wagons). I never want to write about things I don’t actually own and what could be stronger validation than something I bought with my own money?

Next week I’m going to follow this up with some of the best value for money items I use in my everyday life. Alright, on to gear.

Rimowa

My large silver Rimowa in Ischia. I don’t mind wheels on cobble stones. Pictured with a Lotuff bag.

One of the greatest lessons I have been taught about consumer goods is to buy the nice thing now, because nothing is getting less expensive. Case in point: Rimowa. I’m not ashamed to say I own four of these suitcases. Two I bought in Milan at the Rimowa store and two I got through trade deals with Barneys. These German suitcases were relatively inexpensive pre-LVMH and when you bought them in Europe they were always less expensive than the store in NY or elsewhere. (You also could get the VAT back as an American shopping in the EU.) The one bag that I still want but never bought is the Original Trunk. There’s no chance I will be paying $2,175 for a suitcase though. Rimowa seems more popular than ever and I do still really love the brand, it’s just hard to justify the price tag for something that has a good chance of getting lost or stolen.