Intrigue, ink and drama grip the fountain pen group

Lamy, a German pen producer, made a current splash when it quietly rereleased Dark Lilac, a much-celebrated colour of ink. A lush purple with a golden sheen, Dark Lilac, regardless of its reputation, had been produced solely as soon as earlier than — as a restricted version in 2016.

Its reappearance a few weeks in the past was so sudden that the fountain pen group, which makes up a small however passionate nook of the workplace provides market, was agog.

There was only one drawback: It was not the identical colour.

“There is drama within the fountain pen group,” Aidan Bernal, a 23-year-old fountain pen fanatic, mentioned at the beginning of a current TikTok wherein he did his greatest to elucidate the saga — one which has concerned conflicting firm statements, newbie sleuthing and an elusive shade of purple.

“An completely lovely ink,” Bernal mentioned in a phone interview.

Long overshadowed by its ballpoint, gel and felt-tip rivals, the regal fountain pen, which has an inside reservoir for refillable ink, has loved a modest resurgence in recent times. Brian Goulet of Goulet Pens, a web based retailer in Richmond, Virginia, steered that its revival had dovetailed with a pattern of shoppers returning to analog items like vinyl records, mechanical watches and single-blade security razors.

“The fountain pen actually plugs into that,” he mentioned.

As a young person, Bernal was so enchanted by his grandfather’s fountain pens that he hit the web to search out out extra about them. There, he mentioned, he discovered an unlimited group of fellow hobbyists. He now has a web based viewers of greater than 550,000 subscribers on YouTube.

“I’ve been inquisitive about stationery my entire life,” mentioned Bernal, who works as an engineer in Seattle. “I at all times needed to be the child in school with the best pencils and erasers.”

Given the fervour of the group, neither Bernal nor Goulet was stunned that Lamy’s reintroduction of Dark Lilac prompted such a hubbub. Goulet recalled the colour’s launch as a restricted version in 2016.

“It crashed our web site as a result of so many individuals needed it,” he mentioned.

More not too long ago, Goulet mentioned, small bottles of the 2016 model have been promoting for $300 or extra on the secondary market, a pointy markup from the unique retail value of about $12.

But nobody anticipated Lamy to rerelease Dark Lilac — that’s, till final month, when just a few European retailers started promoting an ink known as, watch for it, Dark Lilac.

“Everyone was freaking out,” Bernal mentioned.

Adding to the confusion: Lamy had already unveiled a brand new ink for 2024 known as Violet Blackberry, which many assumed was an homage to Dark Lilac.

Something, although, was amiss. The fortunate few who received their fingers on the brand new Dark Lilac have been dismayed that, as soon as they put pen to paper, the ink was not fairly the identical as the unique. The base colour, in accordance with an early YouTube overview, was neither as blue nor as wealthy. The sheen was inexperienced as a substitute of gold. And it positively was not Violet Blackberry.

“Was it an error in translation? Some new-old inventory that somebody present in a backroom? A copy? A mistake?” Mike Matteson, a philosophy teacher from Greensboro, North Carolina, who goes by Inkdependence on his social media channels, mentioned in an interview. “There wasn’t a press launch or any teasing of the product, and so nobody actually knew what was occurring.”

Enthusiasts opened investigations. Among them was a person who runs an Instagram account known as Fountain Pen Memes. The man, who declined to be recognized, citing a authorities job in Brazil, posted an interplay he claimed to have had final week with a Lamy govt, wherein the chief mentioned the brand new Dark Lilac was an identical to the outdated ink. In a subsequent put up, the account shared an interplay with a special Lamy official wherein the corporate retracted that assertion, acknowledging the ink was totally different.

The man behind Fountain Pen Memes mentioned he believed the corporate was unaware of the ink’s immense reputation.

On Wednesday, Lamy confirmed to The New York Times that the inks have been barely totally different. Some components from the unique model have been not obtainable when the corporate formulated the brand new one.

“So you might say the Dark Lilac of 2024 is the outdated particular version with the technical prospects of at present,” Lamy mentioned, including that it regretted the confusion. “We ought to have given our revised Lilac launch a special title.”

Goulet had a few bottles of the unique Dark Lilac stashed away, so he was in a position to do a side-by-side comparability when he acquired a pattern of the brand new one this week.

“Hardcore pen followers could level out the variations like they’re evening and day,” he mentioned. “But it’s additionally a really strong effort on Lamy’s half to deliver again a beloved ink.”

The ink was barely dry on that fiasco when, on Wednesday, extra information broke: Lamy, family-owned since 1930, had been acquired by the Mitsubishi Pencil Co. of Japan.

“That,” Matteson mentioned, “was not one thing I noticed coming.”