). For her personal travel, she used a Samsonite carry-on for two decades until a handle recently broke.“I was totally against it when I saw it was a duffel, but now I am obsessed with them,” Roemer said. Her fiancé George Dunn, a pilot, got it for Roemer, and she worried her stuff would tumble around inside. “But that really doesn’t happen.”
The duffel is made with water-resistant coating, can stand upright without tipping and was tested in extreme ways for durability. As an added bonus, L.L. Bean monograms the bags for $8. Most importantly, the bag has a lifetime warranty. Roemer always reviews a brand’s warranty because it can be an indicator of how confident the company is in their product.“If it’s a lifetime warranty, they believe in their brand, and they’re pretty secure in being able to fix it,” Roemer said. She recently saw a Tumi bag that had a one-year warranty and another with a three year-warranty. “I thought they must believe in one a little bit more,” she said.