Meet Debra

Almost as soon as I made the switch to a Pocket size Filofax I knew I would want a Kate Spade binder. One search on ebay yielded this beauty, a Wellesley Pocket Debra circa 2006. The exterior is boar hide, the interior is linen-patterned calfskin, the hardware is 24k gold-plated. I have other Wellesley accessories, and can say from experience that the boar hide wears like iron. When I got my new binder in the mail this week I fell in love immediately. Unlike newer KS binders, this one has 15mm rings, making it significantly slimmer than my Malden. This means I had to downsize my filling by a couple of months, but it's not too much of an inconvenience.



In addition to the smaller rings, this binder also lacks the full-length wallet pocket of the Malden, as well as the notepad pocket. It's also more structured, not as soft and pliable as the Malden. It's really a very different binder, which makes it a great alternative to the Malden. I plan to switch back and forth with my whims, and will probably get myself a gray Malden when they finally start shipping stateside.

Here's a little tour of Debra:

The front interior contains four credit card pockets and one full-length vertical pocket.

As you can see here, the binder lays totally flat when open more towards the middle of the pages. It's still pretty flat when you're more towards the front or back of the binder, but the sides do pop up when you have all the pages to one side or the other.

In the back I have my page flags in one of the two full-length vertical pockets. In the leather pen loop I have my Ohto FINE pen.

Here you can see the gold hardware and get an idea of the ring diameter. Any smaller would be too small, I think.

If I had the power to design the next line of binders for Filofax, I'd make a Malden compact, with 15mm rings. It's really a manageable ring size for a pocket binder, slim without being too small. This binder slips into my bag beautifully, it's so slim and structured it's real treat to handle. It's also small and firm enough to hold with one hand and write with the other, something I never could do in any Personal-size binder nor in my Pocket Malden. A slim/compact Malden would be flexible enough to fold back on itself for one-handed holding with one hand while writing with the other. I would also use a pen-clip loop, rather than a full-size pen loop, like my Slimline Adelphi has. It's the only universal pen holder I've ever seen, and it works very well. Anyone from Filofax reading this? You might want to take notes. ;)