Judge Me By My Journal Cover
- Tess Growney
- 11 minutes ago
- 5 min read
The bag charm craze is coming for notebooks next.
For Gen Z, personalizing your everyday essentials is the shiniest new fashion trend. Purses covered with charms and ribbons, Phone cases with beaded wrist leashes, plastic figurines dangling from anything and everything with a loop attached. We thought we’d seen it all until the latest essential to get a makeover: the journal.
Gone are the days of the “secret diary,” an inconspicuous notebook brandishing warnings not to read any further (OR ELSE!). Always carefully stowed away so it wouldn’t fall into the hands of an enemy, or worse, a crush. Now, the humble journal is a luxury accessory bound in patinaed leather, monogrammed with the owner’s initials in gold foil and decorated with sentimental charms. Owners flaunt them on social media, showing off how they’ve decorated their journals and even what is kept inside. The once-secret journal is now an open book confessional.
The trend of sharing journals on social media can be traced back to the bullet journal of the mid-2010s, created by designer Ryder Carroll and popularized by millennial bloggers like Rachel Nguyen. But where the bullet journal lacks in decor (the most being a few stickers slapped on the front of a Moleskine or Leuchtturm), this new form of journaling doubles as both an organizational tool and a fashion statement.
In 2023, Victoire Valmary began posting videos on TikTok to attract business and an international clientele for her family’s handmade leather-bound notebook company, Louise Carmen. The brand, established in 2016 by Fabien and Nathalie Valmary, came after a year-long family trip through Asia, which left Nathalie in need of a way to organize her many notebooks from her travels. The result was the first “Louise Carmen” made of leather that Nathalie picked up at a market in Thailand, and colorful elastic cords that fastened all her notebooks into place (in the vein of the Japanese Traveler’s Company notebooks). It would become the prototype for their now vast selection of journals offered by the Parisen brand, which has garnered a 148k following on TikTok.
But with these journals starting at €122 EUR (around $139 USD), stationery enthusiasts have followed in Nathalie’s footsteps to create their own versions of the Louise Carmen. Philly-based jewelry designer and co-founder of Cult of Angels, Brooke Pizio, made her first journal as a birthday gift for her roommate, who was interested in the Louise Carmen notebooks. At the time, Pizio had leatherwork experience designing accessories like bags and leather cuffs with antique pendants, but had never made a journal.
“From the very beginning, my search to find one for my roommate in a certain color was impossible, and I couldn’t really find one, so I think that I tapped into a market that I didn’t know really existed,” says Pizio.
She’s now received an influx of commissions not for jewelry, but for stylized notebooks with elaborate cross-stitched designs, embroidery, and silver adornments. In recent months, she’s created journals for all purposes, from vow books for couples to commemorate their wedding day to a collection of pink suede journals for influencer Anastasia Karanikolaou, which stuck out in a “PR haul” video on Instagram alongside Rhode lip balms and Balenciaga tees.
A chic, personalized notebook has become another bookish accessory that leans into the trend of literacy – or, at least the appearance of it. An influx of celebrities such as Dua Lipa, Reese Witherspoon, and Kaia Gerber promote titles both well-known and under-the-radar for their respective book clubs. Long-form social media platform Substack is flooded with discourse, whether informed or baseless, from young writers and music-industry moguls like Rosalía and Charli xcx, the latter of whom just scored Emerald Fennell’s buzzy (and heavily stylized) adaptation of the gothic classic Wuthering Heights. One can achieve a “smart” look simply by carrying a novel or a notebook as they would a clutch.
For people creating these fashionable journals, like social media and marketing consultant and creator Hailei Wynter, who created hers in the fall of last year, the style is more than maintaining a writerly image; it is a functional form of personal expression.
“I love making the things that I reach for every day beautiful so that I am more likely to use them every day,” says Wynter, “I want everything I pull out to be very customized and unique and different and feel very me.”
However, fashioning these journals goes beyond external impressions. Whether using a Louise Carmen or something they’ve crafted by hand, creators are sharing how they’ve organized and decorated the interiors of their journals, too, in videos often dubbed “journal tours” or “journal ecosystem tours.” They reveal pockets filled with stickers and pens, photobooth strips clipped onto notebooks, then explain the purpose behind each notebook bound in the journal, and even flip through entries.
“I like posting that content for other people to give recommendations because that's how I put my ecosystem together, just by watching a ton of people and seeing what would work best for me,” says Wynter, who posted her own journal ecosystem video as a “yearning for connection.” Even before joining this digital community of crafters, Wynter and some coworkers all gathered to share how they’ve organized their journals for the new year.
It makes sense that, in a digital age when young people are feeling more isolated than ever, many are turning to analog interests to foster new relationships (even if those connections start on a social media platform). My own Louise Carmen is the product of my friendships.
At the end of 2023, I had discovered Louise Carmen through TikTok, and then through my friend who had just come back to New York from Paris with a red, pocket-sized version. I had planned my first-ever solo trip for the spring of 2024 and knew that, even though I couldn’t afford the notebook, I would visit the store to window-shop. On the first morning of my trip, I woke up in Reykjavik to a Venmo payment. All of my friends, knowing how much I wanted this notebook, had pooled together money so I could afford one of my own. To this day, it’s the most meaningful gift I have ever received. Every time I look at it, I see the journal as a connection to all the friends who put it in my hands, and the charms that connect me to each place I went on my first solo trip.
This specific type of journal is a fashion statement as much as it is a gateway towards connection. A stranger sees someone’s fabulous, meticulously designed journal, and it opens the door to deeper conversation, not just about the craftsmanship and design of the journal itself but also what’s inside — a person’s thoughts and observations, interests, and personality are all bound together in one place. People connect and build long-lasting connections that outlast any trend cycle or fashion fad.
And it's longevity that draws people to the Louise Carmen notebooks and their subsequent iterations. Due to their customizable nature, they can shift both functionally and stylistically as a person’s life does over time. They are both timely and timeless. 🌀
Tess Growney is a writer based in Brooklyn with words in HALOSCOPE, Stereogum, Spin, and IRK Living. She’s interested in writing about the intersection of music and fashion history, planning dinner parties, and curating playlists. You can find her at @tessgrow or at any vintage store in NYC.
