Rimowa Never Still Brings Kim Jones Into the Luxury Travel Conversation
Rimowa's Never Still ft. Kim Jones is a branded content film created by Anomaly Berlin and published in Germany in June 2019, positioning the German luggage maker as a symbol of purposeful, creatively driven travel by following fashion's Kim Jones across Tokyo and India as he gathers inspiration for his work at Dior Men.
The film arrives as the second major chapter of a platform Rimowa first launched in September 2018 to mark the brand's 120th anniversary, according to reporting by LBBOnline. Where that original activation established Never Still as a philosophical stance — the idea that meaningful movement defines a certain kind of ambition — the 2019 expansion introduces three distinct human stories to carry the argument forward. Kim Jones appears alongside separate films featuring NBA athlete LeBron James and classical pianist Yuja Wang, each treated as an independent portrait rather than a conventional celebrity endorsement, as documented by Ads of the World.
In the German market, and across the seven key markets the campaign activates globally — including the United States, China, Hong Kong, and Japan, as reported by LBBOnline — Rimowa is making a deliberate repositioning move. The brand, founded in Cologne in 1898 and acquired by LVMH in 2017, had long competed on the strength of its engineering reputation and its distinctive grooved aluminium shell. Never Still shifts the centre of gravity from the object to the person carrying it. The suitcase becomes almost incidental; what Rimowa is selling is a disposition toward the world. That strategic pivot gives the Never Still platform a rare quality in the consumer durables category: it does not ask consumers to admire a product, it asks them to recognise themselves — or an aspirational version of themselves — in the people on screen.
Rimowa competes in a global luggage market estimated at approximately US$31 billion in 2019, according to Forbes citing research firm Azoth Analytics, with a projected compound annual growth rate of 6.72 percent between 2018 and 2023 per the same source. That growth context matters because it frames the competitive pressure Rimowa faces from both directions: heritage European rivals such as Tumi and aspirational mass-market brands that have steadily improved product quality while undercutting on price.
Rimowa's response, executed through Anomaly Berlin, is to render price comparison functionally irrelevant by relocating the brand inside a cultural conversation about identity and creative labour. The choice of Kim Jones as the film's protagonist is precise. Jones, then serving as artistic director of Dior Men, represents a generation of creative directors whose work is genuinely itinerant — produced in transit, assembled from fragments gathered across continents. In an interview with Esquire published May 30, 2019, Jones stated: "I think my autobiography would be called My Life Out of a Suitcase, for sure," a line that functions almost as organic brand copy. He elaborated further, telling Esquire: "In one week, like week before last, I was in five different countries. I'm used to living like that, and it's how I like to live." The campaign does not need to make this case on Jones's behalf; it simply documents it.
The strategic intelligence in this approach is that it sidesteps the category's standard performance vocabulary entirely. Competitors in the premium luggage segment frequently anchor their communications in product attributes — wheel systems, locking mechanisms, polycarbonate flex ratings. Rimowa, through Anomaly, instead anchors Never Still in a values proposition: that the right kind of travel is generative, not merely transactional. In Germany, where Rimowa's engineering heritage carries genuine cultural weight, this shift is a considered risk. It asks a domestically rooted brand to speak the language of global creative nomadism.
The Never Still ft. Kim Jones film is directed by Jonas and Julien, the directing duo whose visual style tends toward observational intimacy — a quality well suited to a brief that asks viewers to follow a working creative director rather than watch a polished brand ambassador perform for camera. Production credits for the broader Never Still 2019 campaign are attributed to Anomaly Berlin as the lead creative agency, as listed by Ads of the World and confirmed in the Cresta Awards database entry for the campaign.
The film moves between Tokyo and India with Jones, tracing the accumulation of visual references that feed his design practice. The geography is not decorative. Both cities carry specific aesthetic weight in the context of contemporary fashion — Tokyo for its precision and its relationship between tradition and avant-garde disruption, India for colour, textile density, and historical richness. By placing Jones in those specific environments rather than in generic luxury travel settings, the film asserts that creative work has a topography. The Rimowa case appears not as luggage but as a recurring environmental fact, present in hotel rooms and departure halls the way a working tool would be rather than a status accessory.
The creative team behind the Never Still platform includes individuals identified in connection with Anomaly Berlin's work on the account. Frank Hahn and Sebastian Lyman are associated with the creative development of the Rimowa Never Still brand platform, with Nikolaus Ronacher, Bertrand Fleuret, Kerli Teo, and Joanna Roman also named in connection with the campaign's production and account management across its global rollout. The decision to shoot Jones during what appears to be genuine working travel — gathering references, moving between fittings and studios — rather than in staged scenarios gives the film a texture that distinguishes it from the more constructed aesthetic common to luxury goods advertising in the German and broader European market.
No verified performance data for the Never Still ft. Kim Jones campaign is publicly available. Rimowa's 2019 revenue was not separately disclosed by parent company LVMH, according to Business of Fashion. A 2015 sales baseline of €440 million has been reported by Business of Fashion, with longer-term targets approaching €1 billion cited in the same source, but no audited 2019 brand-level result has entered the public record. Market share data specific to Rimowa's position in the German or global premium luggage segment is similarly unavailable in reliable public sources.
What structural analysis can offer is an assessment of the campaign's internal logic. Never Still ft. Kim Jones achieves a clarity of positioning that many consumer durables campaigns fail to reach: it makes the brand's aspiration legible without making it feel manufactured. The selection of Kim Jones as subject rather than spokesperson is a meaningful creative decision that insulates the film from the credibility deficit that shadows conventional celebrity endorsement. Jones's quote in Esquire — that his autobiography would be called My Life Out of a Suitcase — exists independently of the campaign and reinforces it without being produced by it.
The Cresta Awards database listed the broader Never Still campaign as a 2019 finalist in Moving Image, identifying Rimowa as the entrant and Anomaly as the creative agency — an external signal of peer recognition for the platform's craft, per the Cresta Awards. Clapboard rates the Never Still ft. Kim Jones execution at 63 out of 100, reflecting strong strategic coherence and casting intelligence against a degree of creative restraint that limits the film's emotional ambition relative to its conceptual promise.
Never Still ft. Kim Jones is a branded content film Rimowa published in Germany in June 2019, created by Anomaly Berlin. The film follows fashion designer Kim Jones across Tokyo and India, framing purposeful creative travel as the brand's core identity rather than focusing on product attributes.
The Never Still ft. Kim Jones film was directed by Jonas and Julien, as documented by Ads of the World and confirmed in the Cresta Awards database entry for the campaign. The directing duo's observational style shapes the film's portrait of Jones at work across Tokyo and India.
Rimowa chose Kim Jones because his life as artistic director of Dior Men is genuinely itinerant. Jones told Esquire in May 2019 that he had visited five countries in a single week, making him an authentic embodiment of the Never Still platform's argument that creative work is produced through purposeful, constant movement.
Anomaly Berlin created the Never Still campaign for Rimowa, according to Ads of the World and LBBOnline. The platform first launched in September 2018 to mark Rimowa's 120th anniversary and expanded in 2019 with separate films featuring Kim Jones, LeBron James, and classical pianist Yuja Wang.
The broader Never Still campaign was listed as a 2019 finalist in the Moving Image category at the Cresta Awards, per the Cresta Awards database, with Rimowa named as entrant and Anomaly as the creative agency. Clapboard rates the Kim Jones execution specifically at 63 out of 100.
Rimowa activated Never Still across seven key global markets in 2019, including Germany, the United States, China, Hong Kong, and Japan, as reported by LBBOnline. The Kim Jones film was published in Germany in June 2019 and formed part of this coordinated global rollout alongside the LeBron James and Yuja Wang films.
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