Custom Filofax paper by MaudiMade

Custom Filofax paper by MaudiMade, originally uploaded by stirwise.

Incredibly, Filofax don't make green sheets in Pocket size. A helpful Philofaxy reader suggested I buy some custom pages from Maudie Made on Etsy.

Marc Jacobs Lola

Many years ago I saw the Marc Jacobs Lola bag, originally from the Fall 2003 collection (I think), and knew I had to have one. The Lola is a medium-sized shoulder bag with a built-in umbrella compartment (and included umbrella), made in Italy from thick, squishy leather and lined with suede. Lola originally retailed for $795, but typically goes for $100-$200 now. They pop up on ebay periodically, but rarely in colors other than cream and pink, occasionally in black. I already have too many black bags and don't carry white bags or pink bags, so over time the Lola desire waned.

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 the Bag

Inspired by a post on Life Well Planned, and as a follow-up to the contents of my Filofax, I thought I'd share the contents of my bag. Unlike Kanalt, I change bags frequently, sometimes multiple times a week. This is both fun and a way to avoid loading myself down with stuff I don't need. Moving from bag-to-bag forces me to edit my belongings.

Moving into the Malden Pocket

For the last year or so I've been using a variety of Filofax (and Kate Spade) Personal-size binders with a variety of inserts, eventually settling on a day-per-page layout divided up with tabbed month-on-two-pages sheets and color-coded notepages in the back. I recently decided to try out downsizing this setup, which first led me to using Slimline binders and carrying only 2-3 months worth of pages at a time, and a reduced selection of notepages. After just a couple of weeks I moved back into a full-size binder; the Slimline was not going to work.