Memoir, travel logs, daydreams, and a new kind of nomadic lifestyle: blank pages contained within a Moleskine elastic band hold the promise of a book not yet written. From the artistic avant-garde of the 1900s to today’s creative professionals, Moleskine notebooks continue to be a timeless tool for keeping track of ideas, words, drawings, notes. With its minimal design, carefully chosen materials, and hand-finished details, Moleskine notebooks are agile and compact—easy to keep on hand and perfectly compatible with today’s digital recording devices.

Today’s Moleskine notebooks are the direct descendents of 20th Century handmade manufacturer from France, whose products were favored by many of last century’s legendary artists and writers—including Vincent van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and Bruce Chatwin—who wanted something elegant and agile on hand for whenever or wherever inspiration hit, be it on the street, in cafes or while travelling. Famous Moleskine
The original producer of these anonymous black notebooks, a family company from Tours, closed their business in 1986. In 1998, right at the peak of the Internet boom and the mass commercialization of digital technology, a small Milanese publishing house decided to bring the simple black notebooks back to life. It was an unlikely but savvy choice: thanks to the Internet—with its emails, websites—and blogs, all of a sudden people were writing and designing more than ever before. Cultural production reached new levels, and with this growth came the need for lasting, well-made paper products that were both simple and attractive.
The Moleskine notebooks filled the need and soon became cult objects for the new generation of creative, urban, sophisticated nomads.

Whether for designing or writing, whether or work or fun, the blank pages have become a personal, portable and inextricable part of daily life—along with today’s digital tools. Spontaneous communities of illustrators, designers, and artists who scan their sketches from their Moleskines and share them online have sprung up, resulting in artistic events, creative contests, and hybrid notebooks that have been “hackered” and personalized by hand.

Of course, the Moleskine brand is no longer limited to just notebooks. There are agendas, large-format Folio albums, water-color sketch books, desk calendars, reporter’s notepads and hundreds of special editions. Like La Mano dell’Architetto/The Hand of the Architect, created in support of Italy’s environmental foundation, FAI (Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano): a gathering of printed designs that have been bound together in a large album, with works from important architects worldwide who all still practise and encourage free-hand drawing, even in today’s AutoCADera.
For the fashion-forward crowd, Moleskine has proposed the Fashion Capital Guides, a set of notebooks dedicated to the world’s 4 fashion capitals: New York, Paris, Milan, and London. Halfway between a travel guide and a travel diary, it’s for jotting down ideas, impressions, addresses, and style notes inspired by each different city.
The most recent special edition Moleskine has been created especially for yoox.com: for the first time, Moleskine proposes an entirely white notebook, in limited numbers. White pages hardbound between a white cover, with a white elastic closure. The newest, barest member in a long series of collector’s items.