I probably don’t write enough about Clairefontaine notebooks (only 71 posts!) but they are one of the quiet joys of the stationery world, They’ve been around forever, they are relatively inexpensive, many stores carry them, and they are pretty consistently high quality. I was in France recently, and visited a stationery store (of course) and … Continue reading Clairefontaine Pocket Squared Notebook
I recently finished watching the final season of Hacks. Though the premise of the show didn’t interest me when I first heard about it, once I finally started watching, I was completely hooked– so funny and smart, with great characters, stellar performances, and a satisfying emotional arc. And of course I am writing about it … Continue reading Deborah Vance’s Notebook on Hacks
I should have reviewed this notebook ages ago. I bought it back in March 2025, and 10 months is not the longest I’ve gone before reviewing something, but unfortunately, it was long enough for this product to have sold out. But since there may still be items from this brand circulating on eBay or other … Continue reading Jil Largean Notebook Review
Louise Carmen notebooks were featured in the New York Times recently. The article is dated Jan. 16, 2026, so I expected to see it in the print edition’s Sunday Styles section, but as of this writing, it seems to have appeared online only: A New Coveted French Accessory The article talks about the brand’s social … Continue reading Louise Carmen Notebooks in the NY Times
I’ve had my eye on MeePlus for a while, after seeing lots of positive mentions of them on Instagram and Reddit. So when they contacted me to offer a sample of one of their MeePlus SlimPad notebooks for review, I jumped at the chance! MeePlus is a Hong Kong-based small business run by husband and … Continue reading MeePlus SlimPad Notebook Review
Most of my collection of vintage looseleaf notebooks is either basic black ring binders from the first half of the 20th century from makers like Marquette and Wilson Jones, or Filofax organizers from the 1980s and 1990s. I don’t have that many other brands, so I was happy to add this Succes organizer to my … Continue reading Vintage Succes Seven Star Diary
Today we’ll take a look at another item from my collection of vintage notebooks, a Master-Craft loose leaf binder. At first glance, it looks quite similar to some of the other pocket size loose leaf notebooks I own but there are a couple of interesting differences. This Master-Craft notebook was quite well-used. The exterior is … Continue reading Vintage Master-Craft Loose Leaf Notebook
In Parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series, I traced the history of “pocket slim” Filofax models– pocket size, with no snap closure, mostly having smaller rings and no pen loops. But after poring over every catalog in the Philofaxy archives to build up my chronology, there are still some “pocket slim” models I … Continue reading The History of the Pocket Slim Filofax, Part 4: Oddities and Alternatives
In Part 1, I covered pocket slim Filofaxes from the 1980s and 1990s, from the birth of the pocket Filofaxes as a small-ringed, no-fastener organizer, through their first few years when they transitioned to a standard configuration having larger rings, pen loops, and snap fasteners. The first official catalog appearance of a pocket slim Filofax … Continue reading The History of the Pocket Slim Filofax, Part 2
In the introduction to this series of posts, I covered some background on Filofax’s rare pocket size offerings from the 1930s to 1970s. With all that history out of the way, let’s look at how the modern pocket size Filofax organizer was first introduced in the 1989 Filofax UK catalog. This year, the ultimate adaptability … Continue reading The History of the “Pocket Slim” Filofax: Part 1
