The Patron Saint of Luggage : Collecting: St. Jivago Desanges sets great store in vintage baggage. His 100-plus pieces fill his one-bedroom apartment.

St. Jivago Desanges never met Errol Flynn or his first wife, Lili Damita.

But he can tell you a lot about how they traveled.

“In grand style,” says Jivago, as he pulls out one of eight Louis Vuitton steamer trunks belonging to the couple. “This is probably from the 1930s and features custom-ordered orange canvas fabric. They obviously cared about the impression they made.”

But even Flynn and Damita would be impressed by Jivago, whose one-bedroom Park LaBrea apartment in Miracle Mile is, indeed, a tribute to travel. Consider its contents:

* More than 100 pieces of luggage.

* A dozen boxes filled with maps and travel brochures, including one from the 1937 opening of the Paris Metro.

* More than 30,000 vintage stickers from hotels like the Grand in Hanoi and the Windsor in Cairo.

* At least 1,000 hotel room keys, including a wooden pre-WWII key from the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok.

* Travel magazines catalogued and filed by article.

* Hundreds of hotel towels, matchbooks and ashtrays.

“People are really funny when they come into my apartment,” says Jivago, as he prefers to be called. “After they get over the shock, the first thing they usually ask is if I’m moving. I guess it is kind of strange. I don’t know many homes that have trunks staring you in the face when you walk in the door.”

Jivago’s apartment houses a museum-sized collection; in fact, Jivago refers to it as his Museum of Travel Art. Some luggage pieces are in local storage units, while others are used as to store Jivago’s clothing and are piled ceiling-high in his living room, dining room and bedroom.

“It takes a little time getting dressed in the morning,” he says, only half-jokingly.

His collection is carefully catalogued and precisely arranged within the apartment’s limited space. The collection is worth about $100,000, he says.

The 44-year-old St. Jivago Desanges--Spanish for St. Jivago of the angels--has been a collector of luggage and travel memorabilia since he was 14; that’s when his grandfather gave him an old trunk he’d found while cleaning the garage.

“There are a lot of reasons for collecting luggage,” he says, noting that it has become a popular hobby since Ralph Lauren started putting unusual pieces on display in his stores. (Famous collectors include Donna Summer, Tom Selleck, Jerry Lewis and Heather Locklear.)

Jivago adds: “Obviously, there’s the practical side. They do keep things organized. But I have always been fascinated by the craftsmanship involved in luggage. And, of course, there is always the nostalgia associated with travel.”

More than 500 pieces of luggage--from old steamer trunks and travel cases to hatboxes, marine satchels and necessaries--have passed through the collector’s hands.

“It’s significant just for the scope of the collection,” says Jivago, who has had his “artwork” on private display back east and at the Museum of Long Beach. “While people collect keys and matchbooks, I have the whole spectrum of travel memorabilia.”

Many pieces were bought at auctions; among them, the Louis Vuitton luggage of Henry and Clare Booth Luce, and actor Joseph Cotten’s trunk, which was festooned with stickers from his movies and contained his beret.

Others, like the wardrobe chest of auto maker Henry Ford, were bought from friends of friends. According to Jivago, Ford abandoned the piece at the Plaza Hotel in New York and it was later purchased by actor Rory Calhoun, who had his name monogrammed on it.

And then there are the pieces that got away, such as the collection of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Ernest Hemingway and Marlene Dietrich. Jivago says he lost out on a Mary Pickford collection to actress Heather Locklear.

Like a true art historian, Jivago refers to many of the pieces in his vast collection by their “artists,” and he knows their history.

“This is a Vuitton case with a Damier pattern,” he says, pointing out a steamer trunk with a two-tone brown checkerboard pattern. “It dates back to the years 1888 to 1896 and was used before Vuitton’s son designed the LV logo most people are familiar with today.

“This bag,” he says, holding out a striped Vuitton carrying case, “I bought from a French antique dealer here in L.A. who bought it in a Paris flea market. It is from the years 1886 to 1888 and was replaced by the Damier.” He paid $2,400 for the case in 1981. Today, he says, it could fetch “more than five figures.”

In addition to dozens of Vuitton and Hermes bags, Jivago’s apartment holds vintage trunks and bags by Oshkosh, Goyard, Hartmann and Halliburton. He is especially proud of an oversized “Malle-Armoire”-style Louis Vuitton trunk with built-in hangers and drawers, and a wardrobe trunk and suitcase once owned by A. Giannini, the founder of the Bank of America. Another of his Vuitton trunks features a built-in folding table and ironing board; it has a label from the Normandie, which sank in 1942.

He also has a Louis Vuitton bag with the number 78 in the upper right corner, which indicates where the piece falls in the set. “Can you imagine traveling with 78 pieces of luggage?” he wonders.

Jivago, who speaks four languages and who is a photographer and an avid traveler, spends nearly $20,000 a year on his luggage fascination. Some of the money has come from purchasing valuable bags inexpensively at auctions and swap meets and reselling them. The rest is financed through his photography and what he calls “creative business deals.”

He knows the historical value and artistic significance of travel stickers and sells photographs of copies to advertising agencies to use on art and travel brochures. He has expanded his sticker collection with the purchase of 12,000 labels from a private collector for $1,400, and 10,000 one-of-a-kind stickers for $1 each. He is negotiating for 60,000 labels.

“One doesn’t have to travel to appreciate this art,” he says, putting the stickers back into their protective sleeves and returning them to their alphabetized place in the file. But, he admits, it certainly helps.

Five months out of the year, Jivago travels with his favorite suitcase: a Vuitton train case loaded with travel stickers. It is perpetually packed with half a dozen pairs of khaki trousers, a safari jacket and complementing shirts--his signature outfit since 1967 during his student days at UCLA.

Later this month, he is leaving for Brazil to work on several Carmen Miranda-inspired photographs he hopes to incorporate into a series of limited-edition silk-screen prints.

And maybe, just maybe, he says, he’ll “pick up a new suitcase and some stickers along the way.”