Paul and I walked past Smiggle the other day, and though I try not to look inside and be sucked into their tempting world of cute, brightly coloured co-ordinating stationary, I couldn’t help noticing this and then stopping to take a photo on my iPhone:
Okay, it’s not easy to tell exactly what it is so I’ll explain. It’s a book shaped box containing stationary, including a lockable diary.
As I said to Paul… how ‘analogue’.
You see, I can’t help wondering if there’s any appeal in a lockable physical paper diary in this day and age, when privacy is devalued and the tweens and teens this set is aimed at are probably oversharing on a daily basis on various social media sites.
What do you think? Are Smiggle a touch naive, or is there something clever going on here?
A friend of mine showed me a diary of sorts that belonged to her daughter. The daughter and her best friend would take a large (1″ thick) spiral notebook, the kind teachers have students use in class. They would start the school year by writing to each other in class. One girl would have it 1st period and then pass it off to her best friend for the 2nd period class where #2 would answer or comment the writings of #1 and then pass it back for 3rd period, and so on through out the day. This ‘journal’ would be used for the whole year. I thought it was a far better idea than the box of notes my own daughter (now 27) still keeps in the top of the guest bedroom closet. Maybe the locking diary keeps the teacher out once it’s confiscated in class. Either way, if a child is writing, whether in a diary, a note book or a note, it’s all good.
very retro idea of writing in a diary so maybe they are onto something LOL