Vintage Luggage Styles. Take a Journey Through Time As recreational traveling became more and more commonplace in the 19th century, a need for having designated containers to carry your goods from one place to another arise, and pieces of vintage luggage help visually display this transition over the course of a hundred years. Spanning the length of the 20th century, luggage has transitioned from meaning large trunks into highly-compactible, formidable side-rollers, with there being so many stops along the way.