The Moleskeine Effect
The Moleskine has an illustrious history as the notebook of choice for some of history’s great artists and writers. The "nameless black notebooks" fell into obscurity until 1997 when the new owners of the old company cranked up their marketing machine and put them back out on the bookshelves. Moleskine are a “family of notebooks, diaries, and city guides”. They're subject to high quality control standards such as “traction test, weigh check, glue and ink examination, cover thickness measure, rubber band resistance control”. What do they do exactly? Nothing.
Despite their relative passivity in the act of creation, they have become a defining accessory of the urbane and innately “creative”. Fair enough. Dressed in its beautifully cut black leather jacket, the Moleskine does cut a handsome figure. It is well proportioned, stupidly expensive and its mythology goes almost so far as to suggest that the notebook itself is the source of creativity. But the Moleskine reality is a story of aspiration and posture. A Moleskine can be high self-parody, an empty briefcase at a ruthless job interview. If it was a person, it may be a recent resident of Ponsonby or Grey Lynn.
I've only owned one Moleskine. I love the look and feel, its black leather European-ness, its modern classicisms. I’ve had it three years and most of its 180 pages remain blank. I'm scared to soil it with my scrawl. Weighing in at forty dollars, it felt too precious to write anything in. So I didn’t. By contrast, the humble 1B5 exercise book, at 70 cents for 80 pages, offered far more scope for experimentation. For the price of one Moleskine, I could buy 57 1B5s, a whopping 4,560 pages. Pound for pound, there is simply no contest. In my book, the 1B5 closes the chapter on this creativity myth and calls out Moleskine “the anti-creative”.
I've only owned one Moleskine. I love the look and feel, its black leather European-ness, its modern classicisms. I’ve had it three years and most of its 180 pages remain blank. I'm scared to soil it with my scrawl. Weighing in at forty dollars, it felt too precious to write anything in. So I didn’t. By contrast, the humble 1B5 exercise book, at 70 cents for 80 pages, offered far more scope for experimentation. For the price of one Moleskine, I could buy 57 1B5s, a whopping 4,560 pages. Pound for pound, there is simply no contest. In my book, the 1B5 closes the chapter on this creativity myth and calls out Moleskine “the anti-creative”.
A pithy, provocative post, Mr Vegas!
ReplyDeleteI'm inclined to go a little easier on the "marketing machine" behind the moleskine though. Was it really "cranked up"? They're not exactly taking out billboards. They salvaged an object from the past and wrote an informative blurb. Which is to say, the fetishising of the object that followed is not solely a product of marketing.
One could argue that your inability to mark the pristine pages of your notebook says more about you than it does about the moleskine.
Oh I was able, just unwilling. You ought to check out my stack of 1B5s!
ReplyDeleteI buy my moleskines for $12. Fail. And their paper quality (and yellowing) adds character in a sense. Ink looks miles better with the yellow background and using tempera, acrylic and water colours on the moleskine is easy due to the thickness of the paper. I don't have to worry about papers bending because of an open notebook, thanks to the hard cover and rubber band. Also, the envelop on the back cover is great for storing small tidbits of information, clutch pencil leads and the like.
ReplyDeleteWait...your moleskine was $40? What moleskine did you buy???
ReplyDeleteI've never paid more than $16 for a nice, thick one. Is there some giant, mega size or upper class type of moleskines I'm missing out on?
Yup. The New Zealand Moleskeines. Their prices are enhanced by exchange rates, inflation and GST.
ReplyDelete