Hotel Retro Turns Vintage Luggage Labels into a Sticker Book for Design Lovers

Letterform Archive has recently released Hotel Retro: Vintage Luggage Labels from Tokyo to Buenos Aires, a new sticker book that brings together 330 faithfully reproduced hotel labels from the golden age of travel, drawn from the Archive’s collection.

The book traces a time when hotel luggage labels turned steamer trunks into visual records of movement, status and adventure. As more people began travelling by train and sea in the late nineteenth century, grand hotels used these small printed pieces as portable advertisements, sending their names, buildings and destinations across the world on the sides of bags and trunks.

Across its 240 pages, Hotel Retro captures the remarkable range of graphic language found in these labels, from Art Deco glamour and crisp Swiss-style geometry to playful illustration, bold lettering and sun-drenched resort imagery. The selection moves through places like Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Cairo, London, Bali, Rio de Janeiro and the Swiss Alps, showing how each label compressed a destination into a few inches of color, type and atmosphere.

Faithfully reproduced as full-color removable stickers, the book restores these pieces of travel ephemera to their original purpose while reframing them as miniature works of graphic design history. Hotel Retro is available now from Amazon and Letterform Archive’s website.

More design inspiration via Letterform Archive