Smythson X Thomas Lélu Collaboration

In 2025, the idea of carrying a notebook can feel almost radical. You can still find notebooks in tote bags or lying unused at the bottom of a drawer, but there's a growing sense that writing by hand, with intention, has become an act of defiance against notifications and endless browser tabs.  Breaking free from the algorithm, heritage accessories brand Smythson has done something unexpectedly charming through its new collaboration with Parisian artist Thomas Lélu, whose work lives in the spaces between language, humour and design.

 The result? A capsule collection of notebooks in Smythson’s signature shades (cerulean, black and Nile blue) stamped with Lélu’s signature aphorisms that register somewhere between a fortune cookie prophecy and a private joke. They’re the kind of lines that look good on a cover but also land with meaning when you’re deep into a to-do list or scribbling half-articulated thoughts on the train.

The collection also features a limited edition luggage tag and passport holder, both printed with travel-inspired quotes. It’s all very ‘chic in transit,’ but it’s also rooted in something more thoughtful, infusing these inanimate objects with a more human touch. The opportunity to retreat from the digital bombardment of daily life, to find solace within the pages of a notebook, has become a necessarily intimate act, far away from the blue light of a phone. The collaboration doesn’t ask you to perform your productivity, but it does give you permission to make it yours. Ideally, with a bit of wit and a decent pen.

Smythson, of course, is the blueprint for stationery that feels like a luxury. But this collaboration trades polished perfection for something more personal. Less crisp desk diary, more 2am scribbles, jotted down before the thought slips away by morning. Throw in a Nile Blue notebook with an uplifting quote, and suddenly you’re romanticising admin. Hailing from an academic background, Lélu’s parents were a literature professor and a psychoanalyst, so we can certainly see where this charm-infused existentialism comes from. 

The collaboration is launching alongside a pop-up coffee cart outside Smythson’s Sloane Street store, a detail that feels fitting since, like the collection itself, it’s not shouting for attention. It’s a gentle gesture: a pause, a page, a sip. It mirrors the collaboration’s ethos, thoughtful, personal, and quietly present. A moment to pause, jot something down, and remember why notebooks still matter. Not for the aesthetic, but for you. And no one needs a new notebook, but you might decide you’d like to carry one again. And if you’re going to treat yourself to one, it might as well make you smile when you least expect it. Lélu’s words don’t just decorate, they disrupt gently, slipping with and feeling between your to-dos. In a world of performative productivity, these notebooks don’t command, they connect.