Red A5 Belgravia review - by Anita

As mentioned in my previous post, I have more recently moved back into A5 for work. I contacted Alan to see what he might be considering selling and decided on a red A5 Belgravia, as I saw one in personal size at a London meet up years ago and really liked it. Plus, a red A5 with 30mm rings is perfect as it's one of my favourite colours and will give me lots of storage space. (Stephen K was correct about there being a new red Filofax in the future)  

As always, I'm interested to learn more about any models that I haven't owned before, so my first point of call is the catalogues page on Philofaxy to find more information. 

The Belgravia was first introduced back in 2002:

The leather on the exterior is wonderfully soft and feels slightly padded.

I think that it's a nice shade of red and I like the minimal styling. 

On the left interior, we have eight card slots with a further deeper slot at the bottom, a full length zipped pocket, a full length slip pocket behind and a pen loop. On the right, we have a notepad pocket and another pen loop. 

One downside to this model is that it sadly seems to suffer with cracking on the interior next to the rings. 

However, as the rest of the binder's structure seems solid, I believe this will only be a cosmetic flaw and I'm hoping that it won't get any worse. As I won't see the cracks when the Belgravia is in use, I decided to go ahead with my purchase as it's a wonderful Filofax apart from this. 

I forgot to photograph them, but Alan also very kindly added in some lovely extras with my Filofax, an A5 notepad (Fabriano EcoQua dot grid notepad) and a Filofax pin badge. I think that all of us should own these badges, so that we can identify a fellow enthusiast more easily! The notepad is perfect as it is 85gsm paper and the pages are glued for easier removal. 

As I'm still doing mostly training sessions, I'm using it mainly to take notes, but may make or buy some dividers to help me keep track of my to-dos. It's also perfect timing to get my A5 now as I will soon be starting another social media job, as well as my current bookkeeping role. 

 

UPDATE as of 23/01/21

Sadly in the short time that I've been using my Belgravia, the cracking has worsened (as mentioned in Feld Effekt's comment below), so unfortunately I would not recommend this model either. It is a shame as otherwise it is a lovely Filofax.