The iconic Moleskine notebook features an elastic closure; a hard, thick, black cover; slightly rounded corners; a bookmark ribbon; and an expandable inner pocket with a booklet inside containing Moleskine’s history. Inside the front cover, you can fill in your address after “In case of loss, please return to:” and you can value your notebook’s net worth by filling in “As a reward: $___.” I’ve known many Moleskine users, and in every notebook I’ve seen this page is blank. Maria Sebregondi, the founder of Moleskine, was born and raised in Italy. Her mother worked as an editor and a graphic designer. “I remember, when I was a child, having graphics around all the time,” she said. Sebregondi’s background is primarily in literature and publishing, but, she said, a “kind of visual sensibility was strong in my family.” Moleskine-style notebooks had been produced since the eighteen-fifties, by small French bookbinding companies, and distributed in Paris bookstores; they were used by Picasso, Hemingway, Van Gogh, and the like. (“Moleskine” refers to the traditional oilcloth binding; moleskines are not made out of moles’ skins.) Sebregondi herself remembers using the notebooks while in Paris in the early nineteen-eighties. But, in 1986, the last traditional moleskine manufacturer, a small stationer in Tours, France, closed down. Moleskines went extinct, driven out by cheaper, mass-produced notebooks. In 1995, Sebregondi came across a description of moleskine-style notebooks in a book by the travel writer Bruce Chatwin. Inspired by Chatwin’s devotion—he wrote of trying to persuade a Paris shop to sell him a hundred moleskines at once—Sebregondi approached Modo & Modo, a small Milanese design and publishing firm that she consulted for, with the idea to resurrect this style, and Modo & Modo began producing notebooks. The moleskine was reborn.