For primary school teacher Alouise Somera, 28, junk journaling – a kind of scrapbooking that uses found materials – has been a lifelong passion.
“My parents made scrapbooks when they were younger and in love, and I thought it’d be a really nice way to preserve my memories and let my kids get to know me in the future and what I was like at their age,” she says.
“[But] for a long time, it felt like an old lady hobby – it was very lame to go, ‘Oh yeah, my hobby is scrapbooking’ when you meet new people, but it’s really changed – it’s been nice to see.”
Stationery and crafts are booming as part of Gen Z and Millennials’ broader embrace of analogue culture.
Trent Rigby, director of Retail Customer Advisory, says being offline – and by extension, engaging with stationery – has become a status symbol in our increasingly online world (although ironically, the trend is being driven by social media).
“It’s moving away from pure function – instead of ‘I’m going to buy a notebook because I need it’, it’s aspirational,” he says.
From artist-designed stickers to flashy pens and handmade paper, these are not just tools to get a job done, but accessories to flaunt. Some, like the Japanese Hobinichi planner, are a subtle nod to others in the know.
Rigby sees the stationery boom as an evolution of the Lipstick Effect – a phenomenon in which cosmetic sales increase during times of economic recession.
Alongside small indulgences such as frozen yoghurt and Labubu dolls, buying an $8 sticker pack or new pen might be seen as an extension of “little treat culture”. While Rigby says sector growth is on par with the broader retail category – just over 2 per cent yearly – he thinks the trend apex is yet to come.
Christina Kelly has been in business for more than two decades with her fashion boutique Made590 in Sydney’s inner west.
A lifelong lover of scrapbooking and Japanese stationery, Kelly had been trying to incorporate more crafting wares into the business unsuccessfully for years until things started taking off in August when she launched an in-house stationery range.
“From the get-go, it’s been so popular. Mainly through TikTok, we’ve had a new customer base visit us,” she says.
“People walk in and they’re like a kid in a candy store.”
Off the back of this success, she has launched regular journaling sessions for community to craft together.
While she acknowledges the movement is trending now (with mass market retailers such as Kmart jumping on board), Kelly thinks practices like journaling and scrapbooking are here to stay.
“Those sorts of things have stood the test of time. People go, ’Oh my God, I used to journal growing up, or I had a travel journal,” she says.
“It’s so personal … nobody regrets ever making a photo album.”
Japan’s reputation for impeccable paper products is nothing new. But with Australian tourists flocking to the country in record numbers, an increasing number of young travellers seem to be catching the stationery bug.
Japan’s trade ministry itself has suggested inbound tourism is a key way for visitors to discover homegrown brands, continuing to seek them out once they return home.
In Australia, Japanese-founded brands such as Muji, bookstore chain Kinokuniya and variety store Daiso have enjoyed success for decades.
Artists Max Malone and Zoe Crook started That Paper Joint, a Melbourne art studio hosting collage and other craft workshops, during COVID.
The space was an opportunity to share their love of the print medium with their community, particularly coming out of the city’s tough lockdowns.
“From the moment we had our doors open, we had people coming in with wide smiles and wide eyes just with the joy that there was this third space to be in,” he says.
“It can be so meditative to have pen and paper in your hands, to be cutting up from old books and magazines. It’s really therapeutic,” says Malone, who hosts private workshops as well as corporate sessions.
Their customer base is two-pronged – spanning those in their 30s nostalgic for their childhood, and a “younger generation who sense there was something they didn’t have access to as readily with the digital age. There’s this yearning for something more tactile,” says Malone.
Teacher Somera, who has kept stickers from her youth, plans to share her love of crafts with her students through zine-making and scrapbooking workshops.
“Hopefully, I can influence the next generation. That would be so nice,” she says.
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