Before Louise Carmen opens at noon nearly every day, young women in long beige and navy trench coats form a line inside Paris’ glass-ceilinged Passage du Grand Cerf shopping center.
They’re here to buy and personalize leather notebooks, which start at 122.55 euros each — or roughly $143.14 — and can cost as much as 609.55 euros after accounting for customizations like personal engravings, paper styles and attached charms. A medium-sized notebook, plus minimal customization, may run closer to 170 euros, or just under $200.
“The lines started one year after we started [posting] on TikTok” in 2023, says co-founder Nathalie Valmary, who launched the company with her husband in 2016.
Louise Carmen’s TikTok videos reached a new and ravenous American audience, who are now responsible for 60% of the brand’s online orders, Valmary says. Some Americans now post videos about flying overseas to buy their notebooks in person, or swinging by one of the brand’s two Parisian shops while vacationing in France. Others post about sourcing or creating similar leather journals for a fraction of the price.
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In other words, the notebooks — Valmary’s term for leather coverings that can hold multiple booklets of paper, strung together with elastic — have become a status symbol for a swath of primarily American women in their mid 20s to early 30s.
Writing in physical journals became popular during the Covid-19 pandemic, and has remained in vogue as some young Americans seek ways to get offline, says Marni Shapiro, a co-founder and managing partner of research and consulting firm The Retail Tracker. The U.S. stationery market, which also includes writing utensils, planners and notepads, generated $42.66 billion in revenue in 2025, according to a Fortune Business Insights report.
Some people view journaling as a mental wellness strategy, providing similar benefits to meditation or mindfulness. More than 4 million TikTok posts have been tagged with “journal” or “journaling,” including many about people’s collections of notebooks — sometimes called “journaling ecosystems” — or writing prompts.
An in-person experience for a personalized wellness product — in a frequently visited European city, no less — is just what this particular generation of shoppers wants, Shapiro says.
‘Keeping a journal by hand, I think it’s a big freedom’
Valmary, who previously worked in fashion, accidentally came up with the idea for Louise Carmen on a yearslong trip with her family across Asia, she says. She constantly slowed their travels down while stopping to rummage through her backpack for one of her six Moleskin notebooks, each with a designated purpose, she says.
She bought a brightly colored elastic cords to hold the notebooks together in Tokyo, and leather in Chang Mai, Thailand, she says. A cobbler in a Chang Mai cut the leather so Valmary could weave the cords through and secure her notebooks, she says.
Valmary didn’t realize her organizational solution could be a business until her friends marveled at its convenience back in France, she notes. Louise Carmen gradually grew, primarily through direct-to-consumer sales online, she says.
The brand opened its first brick-and-mortar storefront in December 2019, says Valmary. Cuir Invest, a fund created by the French leather trade association Alliance France Cuir, invested in Louise Carmen in 2019, according to the notebook company’s website.
Louise Carmen doesn’t sell the world’s only leather journals, of course. Vienna, Austra-based Paper Republic is one price-competitive vendor. Some TikTok users say they’ve made do-it-yourself versions for less money at home or in a leather-crafting class.
The journals may be particularly popular due to the sensory experience they offer — leather has a distinct feel, look and smell — says Joe Pine, an economy researcher, consultant and author. Plus, leather is often seen as a premium material, especially when it’s customizable and when customers can see the product as contributing to their mental wellness, he says.
One of Louise Carmen’s Paris-based storefronts
Courtesy of Louise Carmen
Across industries, modern companies are increasingly offering customers a chance to “transform” themselves — whether in terms of their finances, appearance or health — according to research in Pine’s book “The Transformation Economy,” which published on Feb. 3. The Gen Z customers who find Louise Carmen on TikTok seem attracted to the notebooks as a means to get offline and be creative, says Valmary.
Valmary, who’s kept a diary her entire life, says she understands the appeal. “Keeping a journal by hand, I think it’s a big freedom,” she says. “It’s a secret place for us. It’s a place where we can organize our ideas, try to understand things, create things.”
Conversions from euros to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 euro to $1.16797 USD on April 9, 2026.
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