January Style: The Incomparable Dayplanner

Better than a BlackBerry and more intuitive than an iPhone – the ever reliable agenda.

Technological innovation has hoodwinked everyone from preteens to pensioners into believing that BlackBerrys and other electronic gizmos are indispensable. As useful as they are for making calls, emailing and surfing the web, their finicky touch screens and tiny keypads tend to complicate the most basic of tasks, such as noting the time and date of your next quarterly department meeting. Until iPhones get intuitive (sometime in 2015) or Androids can read minds (two months after that), the speed and convenience of taking pen to paper and jotting information down in a book designed expressly for that purpose will never be matched.

1. Hermès notebook ($1,050) and agenda ($1,275), hermes.com 

2. Handmade Florentine marble journals, $445, Paper-Ya

3. Italian leather-bound marble wrap journal, $105, Paper-Ya

4. Hand-tooled, hardcover, leather-bound journal, $97.95; Soya leather Quo Vadis Day-timer, $37.75; and Pierre Belvedere basket-weave agenda, $29.95, all from Paper-Ya

5. Quo Vadis vinyl agenda, $26.75, Paper-Ya

6. Louis Vuitton Damier Graphite canvas ring agenda ($490) and Monogram Canvas ring agenda ($490), louisvuitton.com 

7. Fiorentina rose-embossed leather strap journal, $162, Paper-Ya

8. Holt Renfrew vinyl agenda, $95, holtrefrew.com 

9. Embossed, faux-croc journal, $105, Paper-Ya

10. Italian leather-bound marble wrap journal, $105; and Quo Vadis planner, $37.75, all from Paper-Ya

11. Hermès Day-timer, $1,050, hermes.com 

12. Antique leather journal with bolt closure, $110, Paper-Ya

13. Louis Vuitton Epi leather ring agenda, $540, louisvuitton.com 

14. Quo Vadis soya leather Day-timer, $41.25, Paper-Ya

15. Hermès snap-closure address book, $325, hermes.com 

16. Links of London ballpoint inverse pen, $220,  linksoflondon.com 