There are surprisingly many people who own a Victorinox without being able to say exactly since when.
At some point, it was just there.
In a jacket pocket.
In the glove compartment.
In the basement, which you long wanted to clear out and where you were actually looking for something else.
And then it just stayed.
Maybe because it never demanded much attention from its owner.
People lose keys, wallets—whole suitcases.
Victorinox endures.
But because it works.
Not because of sentimentality.
It opens packages.
Pulls corks.
Cuts threads.
Removes paper clips from printers.
And it solves small problems that weren’t even problems five seconds earlier.
Karl Elsener originally developed knives for the Swiss army at the end of the 19th century.
Not as a lifestyle product. Not as a design object. But as a tool.
By the way, the corkscrew was added later—probably because Swiss officers didn’t want to drink only water.
The Swiss officers had trouble with bottle openers; American soldiers struggled more with the pronunciation.
According to tradition, they couldn’t pronounce “Swiss Officer’s Knife” very well. So at some point, it simply became: “Swiss Army Knife.”
After that, things got a bit confusing.
Today, Victorinox is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the same time found in surprisingly many kitchen drawers with old batteries, rubber bands, and manuals for long-gone devices.
Few objects achieve such a broad range of social integration.
This knife somehow survived over a hundred years of world history.
Two world wars. NASA missions. PowerPoint.
And probably several generations of poorly organized kitchen drawers.
My grandmother, by the way, too.
However, she didn’t come from Switzerland but from Silesia, and unlike Victorinox, she wasn’t involved in various NASA missions. At least, there are no official reports about that.
Victorinox doesn’t try to seem interesting. It doesn’t stage a lifestyle.
It doesn’t want to replace personality or push itself to the forefront.
It's something people carry with them for decades without ever having to define a precise relationship to it. It’s just there.
When I think about it, Victorinox and my grandmother had quite a bit in common.