Louise Carmen Notebooks: Behind the Brand

This Parisian artisan brand crafts bespoke leather-bound notebooks that have quickly grown into a social media sensation. 

Founder Nathalie Valmary, 59, her husband Fabien and their daughter Victoire, 31, are the family behind the famously chic Louise Carmen journals, a company 10 years in the making.

Louise Carmen was ready to open its doors in 2020, but then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, shutting down the world for months on end. Victoire decided to start making videos on TikTok and Instagram showing how each personalized notebook was made to advertise their e-shop, becoming an internet sensation overnight.

 

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Now with over 180k followers on Instagram and 1.7m likes on TikTok, this family-run business has grown into two workshops in Paris and a bustling e-shop.

Nathalie created the Louise Carmen brand in December 2016, after returning from a year-long family journey through Asia. The name pays homage to the main character in a novel Nathalie wrote during their travels, who owned her own brand, inspiring her to do the same.

“Before I started this company, I thought I was the only person in the world still using notebooks instead of a smartphone,” says Nathalie. “Everyone was saying notebooks and everything analogue was going to disappear, but I have never stopped.”

Nathalie has always used notebooks in her daily life and to document her travels. Now, she sketches charms and layouts the workshop floor plans, a practice that is reflected in the variety of notebooks and styles the brand offers.

Interestingly, lined paper was the last notebook Nathalie created. She prefers dotted and black-page pages, feeling that traditional lines were too restrictive for the variety of things she uses them for. Eventually, she agreed to add them, choosing to manufacture them at the same family-run workshop in Shanghai that works with and supports 180 disabled people.

Customers can customize their journals, choosing which types of paper notebooks they like to use, and can include charms designed specially by Wayans Silversmiths in Bali. Yet the most personal touch comes from the way the vegetable-tanned leather ages and evolves.

“We are so lucky because Paris is full of people with savoir-faire when it comes to leather. We are a good city when it comes to knowing fashion,” says Nathalie.

Since 2017, Louise Carmen has partnered with a leather workshop located between Châteauroux and Chambord, showcasing and preserving the French leather savoir-faire. This exceptionally durable leather is then dyed in Tuscany, using traditional tanning processes by placing the leather into barrels of tanning solution made from vegetables, which takes anywhere from 30 days to two months.

What makes this leather so special is that it develops a rich and unique patina over time, according to how it is used. 

“People are used to seeing leather produced with chemicals that don’t change, they always stay the same or use plastic to give them shine,” says Nathalie. “Your Louise Carmen notebook won’t be the same as mine, even if it is the same color, because you won’t use it in the same way as I do. It’s the ultimate personalization.”

With six notebook styles, three sizes, 15 leather colors and a selection of unique charms, Louise Carmen creates leather-bound journals, each one completely one of a kind, crafted for its owner and embodying their motto: Our Notebooks Change your Life. 

 

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Louise Carmen’s journals have been found at Printemps Haussmannn and Le Bon Marché department stores over the past decade, as well as in their charming Parisian workshops on Passage du Grand Cerf and 51 Galerie Vivienne, perfect for gifting or indulging in a little luxury for yourself. 

“There’s something about notebooks that brings so much happiness, and I hope we continue being very close with our customers. We want to grow as a company, but not lose the soul within Louise Carmen in the process,” says Nathalie. 

For Nathalie, Fabien and Victoire, Louise Carmen is more than a brand; it’s a celebration of French craftsmanship and individuality. Ten years of family support and hard work, combined with the surprising influence of a social media platform Nathalie once assumed was for children, has transformed this artisan company into an elegant essential in any Parisian’s handbag, changing their lives as well as their customers.