I first spotted the Kleid Japan 2face notebook on Instagram, where I had to do some enlarging and squinting and auto-translating to figure out what it was. This brand does not seem to have much of a US presence, but I was actually able to order a Kleid notebook from Amazon, where several color combinations were available. I decided to play it safe with black/red, but the brown/orange, navy/light green, and burgundy/blue versions were also appealing.

Kleid 2face Notebook Exterior

On the outside the Kleid notebook is pretty typical, with a soft, smooth cover material similar to a Rhodia Webbie. The red elastic closure and ribbon contrast nicely with the black. The only branding is the gold stamped logo on the front. I tend not to love logos on the front cover, but in this case it has a nice refined look and doesn’t bother me.

The construction of the notebook seems very solid and well-done, though I did notice that the edge of the back cover sticks out a bit more than the front. The front cover has very little overhang, so it’s a shame the back doesn’t match! The elastic is a slightly looser tension than I prefer, as it doesn’t sit snugly when you tuck it around the back cover, but this is pretty typical.

Kleid 2face Notebook Interior

Inside the notebook, you get beautiful red endpapers, in an unusual textured paper. There is an expanding pocket in the back. The ribbon marker is the skinny type found in Nolty and Daiso notebooks, narrower than most other brands use. There are six stitched signatures of paper and the pages open quite flat throughout. The last signature is perforated.

The pages have an almost yellowish tone with a 2mm light blue grid, which I love. Until I saw it in person, I didn’t really envision quite how small the grid would be. If the lines were any darker, this could be distracting, but the blue color on the off-white paper is actually very subtle and works well with large or small handwriting. I would love it if more notebook brands offered a tiny grid design like this. I like the way it looks on the pages edges too, giving them a slight bluish tone.

Kleid 2face Notebook Pen Tests

Unfortunately, what I didn’t love about the paper was its performance with wet pens. Quite a few bled through, and many feathered. Some inks also resisted the grid lines– this is normal with squared paper, but the one drawback of having such a small grid is that you notice it more. The paper has a soft feel, not as super-smooth as Moleskine. I will happily use it with my Uniball SIgno RT 0.38 pens, but will keep fountain pens far away.

Conclusion

I will put this in my “maybe use someday” pile, though I wonder if that back cover overhang would get on my nerves with daily use. And it’s a shame about the fountain pens. This is the first higher-end Japanese notebook I’ve used that hasn’t been fountain pen friendly, I think. (The notebook is made in China, but that is also the case for some other Japanese branded notebooks, such as the Daiso notebook I reviewed recently, which performed better with fountain pens despite costing a lot less than the Kleid!)

On Amazon, these “A6” size Kleid 2face notebooks cost $17-26, including free shipping from a third-party seller in Japan. If you must have this brand and this tiny grid design, I guess you’ll pay it, but otherwise, most people won’t want to pay that much for this combination of features and performance.

But I would be interested to hear from any readers whether they’ve had the same experience with the Kleid 2face notebook. In researching the Kleid brand, they seem to present themselves as having a premium paper in at least some of their notebooks.

They have done a collaboration with the Life notebook brand, which I thought was broadly respected as always having fountain-pen friendly paper– it’s hard to tell with auto-translated info, but it seems the Kleid contributions to the collaboration are just their 2mm grid paper in a section of the notebook and logo on the cover, while other sections of the notebook have Life’s regular paper in two different shades of white. Would Life want to put their name on something if not all the paper was fountain pen friendly?

Also, other Kleid notebooks claim they are fountain pen friendly and made in Japan. I’m left wondering if the 2face notebook is just their lower-end, made-in-China product, or if the brand is hot enough that someone would bother to counterfeit it, and I didn’t get the real thing!

I’d like to give a Kleid notebook another chance someday, and will be keeping an eye out for them in US stores.