The great fashion designer Etienne Aigner was born in Hungary in 1904. More than half a century ago he presented his first handbag collection in New York � and caused a major sensation. The reason that people in 1950 were so excited about Aigner's exclusive leather creations was that ever since the invention of the "steamer trunk" for the legendary transatlantic liners or the Orient Express, there had been no real innovations in travel luggage. A few years later Etienne Aigner met Heiner H. Rankl, a businessman with a keen feel for the future and an equally strong sense of tradition � and the cult brand of AIGNER was born. That was in 1965, in Munich.