The Mulberry Agenda organiser is in Oak Darwin leather and the Gillio Medium and pocket Mia Caras are in Gold Epoca leather
I am not a fan of the new Vegetable Tanned Leather used by Mulberry, preferring the now-discontinued heavier, thicker and grainier Oak Darwin. I think it looks better, feels better and wears better. I stopped buying Mulberry new when they stopped using Darwin, preferring to buy pre-loved instead. Mulberry’s new leather is called NVT – Natural Vegetable Tanned and is lighter, thinner and smoother.
I can recognize genuine Darwin leather at about twenty paces, and to me the only planner leather that comes close is the Gillio Epoca. time is the only factor that will tell which wears the best but my vote is for Mulberry Darwin in this regard.
My Mulberry planner is in agenda size (this was the former Mulberry medium size and is now their largest size, as A5 has been discontinued), which is A6. The Mia Cara picture up top has both medium and pocket sized Gillio Mia Caras, but the pictures below feature the pocket size. The Mulberry is from 2007 (7 years old) and has been intensively used. The pocket Mia Cara is about 9 months and has been lightly used.
My personal take on it is that the Epoca leather feels better to the touch than the Darwin. It is softer and smooshier and is very tactile. The Mulberry Darwin not so much, but it wears so beautifully. I reckon that in about 15 years the Darwin will have worn better than the Epoca but that the Epoca will still be softer and the kind of leather you just want to cuddle.
Here, for your perusal, are photos of my Mulberry and Gillio planners. You can see how similar they are in some ways and how different in others.
Hi there,
I am lucky enough to own the Mulberry Agenda you have shown above. Can you please tell me where I can find inserts for this? I am sure it is commonly known as being of A6 size. The original inserts as sold from Mulberry are far too expensive. I am only interested in either plain or lined inserts as I’d like to use it as a glorified notebook (without the organisational features of an agenda).
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Kind regards
Ethan Cane
I read around the web and found reference to a Rapesco 6 hole punch which can apparently be adjusted to the spacing for this agenda. 19/19/38/19/19.
I always remembered your website was really good on this topic and you detailed this agenda really well.
🙂
Thank you!
I have a blog post on where to find Mulberry inserts, but for plain or lined inserts for Mulberry Agenda binders, I would recommend Etsy. There is also an A6 as well as a Mulberry Agenda group on Facebook which will have loads of suggestions. I have a blog post called Updated list of groups and you can find links to them there. If you have difficutly, leave a comment and I can link you to the posts when I am at my computer again 🙂
Mmmm nice!