What are Your Travel Must-Haves?

We all have a list. Some of ours are short (generally only those of non-metro guys) but most of ours are long and ever-expanding. Your customized and unique travel essentials list is born out of trial and error, learning the hard way and not listening to mom – until you are finally able to remember how horrible plane socks are or how much you craved a Panado last time or that despite being a fashionista you really should have packed a raincoat during monsoon season.

With plumper, uglier assistants pandering to their every desire, first class all-the-way tickets and unlimited LV monogrammed luggage, celebrities have it a tad bit easier than most of us. However, they do have to run the paparazzi gauntlet on the other side, something that most of us are quite happily spared from. How do they manage?

Tim Gunn, Heidi Klum’s right-hand-man in Project Runway and cameo star of How I Met Your Mother and Sex and the City 2 always takes “extra underwear, just in case… I of course travel with all of my skin products, you have to at my age…and I always travel with a good book.”

In her book, That Extra Half an Inch, the ever-so-posh Victoria Beckham writes that she recommend you take the following in your hand luggage: “Johnson’s baby wipes to take your make-up off; a good, heavy moisturizer; eye cream; lip balm; herbal sleeping pills; Chantecaille’s Rose Water or Evian Spritz… some music and a pile of magazines and books you’ve been saving up. That can pretty much get you through any flight.”

Gorgeous super model Chanel Iman told Vogue.com that she doesn’t lock her front door without packing Smith’s Rosebud Salve: “I always have that. It’s good for the lips and nails. I rub it on my cuticles.” She also takes along a brow pencil, saying, “For me, I really like a filled-in eyebrow. I can’t leave the house without my eyebrow brush and pencil,” and mascara, “I always carry around some mascara—the old-fashioned Maybelline,” she says, pulling out the classic pink-and-green Great Lash tube. “It’s better than the expensive stuff.”

Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine from What Not to Wear fame write in their Trinny & Susannah Survival Guide, “With meticulous planning we manage to pack everything we need into a holdall. It hasn’t always been the case. Susannah used to turn up to the airport with only the clothes on her back, while Trinny would arrive for a weekend away lugging the contents of her house in a steamer trunk” proving that it is not only us economy-class travelers who find packing difficult.

Here’s my ultimate (until next trip, anyway) list for carryon luggage – thought I would spare you the actual suitcase part
Camera, Moleskin notebook with pen, paperback books, international fashion magazines, The Economist, face wipes, toothB&B (plane ones are gross), make-up essentials, soft woolly socks, a pashmina & the general handbag essentials (hairbrush, wallet, lip balm etc).

What have I left out that you always take? Any clever tips or travel tricks for the rest of us?