Lamy Al-Star Aubergine Ballpoint Pen Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

It's that time of year again: annual edition color schemes for Lamy's Safari and Al-Star pen lines. For 2025, we have several lovely options to choose from, and I decided to give the Aubergine Al-Star a whirl since the yellow-green section was calling out to me. While some people lean more toward either the Safari or Al-Star, I just tend to follow the colors that I like. They're both great pen designs in my book!

The Aubergine edition of the Al-Star is a dusty gray-purple body paired with a yellow-green translucent section and black hardware. When looking at the images online, I couldn't decide if I really liked the body color, but the section is what really got me. I'm a sucker for bright translucent anything.

I was hoping that the body would be a more striking color in person, but I was a bit disappointed by it. It's a unique color for sure, but it doesn't match up with my idea of aubergine. Here's a color swatch and then a photo of various aubergine fruits from around the world. I'm not crazy, right? Aubergine wasn't a great name for this color.

Naming issues aside, it's still a bit of a dull color in my eyes. There's a small hint of purple, but this is mostly a dark gray body. Despite the underwhelming body color, the section easily saves the pen for me. It's a bright, fluorescent color that just begs to be picked up and used or turned around in your hand to let the light do fun things to the material.

The cone is a matte black metal, the nock plunger is a soft black material, and the clip is Lamy's standard glossy black material. Nothing crazy, and I think they could have had a little bit more fun with either the clip color or the nose color (or both??). Oh well! The other Al-Star option for this year, Denim, also seems to have missed an opportunity to really capitalize on the fun colors, but it's also quite a looker.

Writing with the Al-Star ballpoint is a mediocre experience. The Lamy M16 refill is decent, but my main gripe with every one I try is that they take a little too long to start working after they've been idle for more than a few minutes. It's normal for ballpoint to take a second to wake up, but the M16 takes longer than most. It wouldn't be so bad if there were other options available to swap out the M16, but that's not the case. Lamy's proprietary refill is just about the only player in the market, outside of Monteverde's options, which aren't much better.

Personal gripes aside, the M16 refill is totally capable and works fine 99% of the time. I'm just spoiled by some of the other ballpoint options out there. I'll be (un)patiently waiting for Lamy to release M16 refills that use the Jetstream's ink formula.

If you've ever used a Lamy Safari or Al-Start before, then you'll know how this pen feels in the hand. The grip section has a unique shape that favors the standard tripod grip — index, thumb, and middle — to hold the pen steady when writing. This doesn't work for everyone, and means that it's not a great option for people that use different grips that are incompatible with this type of grip design. For me, I can use a standard tripod grip after a little adjustment period, and the Al-Star/Safari is comfortable for me after that. I just have to keep myself from subconsciously rotating the pen a bit when I reset my grip after a few words or sentences.

One of the things I love about the ballpoint versions of these pens has always been the covered nock mechanism. I love the squishy accordion-like design and the unique feel it produces when extending or retracting the tip.

Overall, the Aubergine is a fun color for the Al-Star. Yes, I wish they would have made better choices regarding the body color, but it's still a winner for me due to the grip section. If it speaks to you, then grab one! As always, they're available as ballpoints, fountain pens, mechanical pencils, and rollerballs.

(Vanness Pens provided this product at a discount to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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LAMY Safari Scarlet Fountain Pen Giveaway

What color is Scarlet? LAMY has their answer, in the form of the Safari Scarlet Fountain Pen. Do you agree? Maybe you need to see it in person first, so why not enter to win this pen, with a Medium nib, and decide for yourself. Read the rules below and enter away!

Lamy Safari Scarlet Fountain Pen Giveaway

Meet Your Maker: Bob Dupras, CORRL Creations

(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)

Before Barry Manilow broke out as a solo artist in the 1970s, a lot of people knew his work without knowing they knew it, because of all the advertising jingles he’d sung, written, or both (“I am stuck on BandAids….” “Like a good neighbor State Farm is there…” “You deserve a break today…”). So one might be tempted to call Bob Dupras the Barry Manilow of custom fountain pens – if you have a collection of pens from independent makers, you probably have examples of his work, but he doesn’t make pens. Dupras does not dislike the analogy. “Plus I’ve actually seen a Barry Manilow concert!”

Following a career in information technology, Dupras’s first choice hobby was to continue his longtime interest in scuba diving, but ultimately back surgery put an end to that, and he turned to woodworking, having enjoyed learning to use a lathe in high school shop class. Kit pens entered his repertoire in 2011, and he found the forums of the International Association of Pen Turners, where he saw resin blanks for sale. He bought some, and soon wanted to make his own to “feed the hobby.” Through the pen turners forums he found Jonathon Brooks of Carolina Pen Company, and asked him for some guidance just to get started. At the time Brooks was using polyester resin, so that’s where Dupras also started. “He coached me on the phone over a month or so. I never met him in person until I went to the DC show two years ago.” Now they both work exclusively in alumilite resin.

Shawn Newton, who’s also located in Arkansas, began using Dupras’s blanks, and pretty soon he said, “Put your blanks on Instagram. Everyone is asking about them.” “I had no idea the pen community is what it is, I wasn’t on Instagram.” He will still make a pen now and then – “I mostly make click pens with Schmidt mechanisms, that’s what I like to use myself” – but like most pen makers who turn to making blanks, the blanks have taken over. “I’m not as busy as Jonathon, I don’t do large orders, but I’m busy making blanks.”

That’s not to say that Dupras hasn’t done collaborations, just not ones that require hundreds of pieces. He’s done batches for Lucky Star Pens, River City Pens, and some other independent makers, as well as Leonardo and Galen Leather.

Inspiration for new materials will often come from collaborator requests, like the NASA photograph of Mercury that led to a collaboration pen with Lucky Star, as well as ocean and water themes. But a new source of inspiration is provided by his five grandchildren, whose initials formed the name he chose for his company: CORRL Creations. “There’s only one vowel so I didn’t have a lot of options! CORRL sounds like coral which called back to my love of scuba diving.” One granddaughter in particular is interested in blank making and has designed some blanks that are selling well and have been made into pens by various makers. “She will probably want to make a pen soon.” Blanks from the kids are all named after them; I got a peek at one called Ryan’s Summer that looked like colors of sherbet.

Dupras has taken his pen skills into a rewarding volunteer relationship with the local Veterans Administration hospital and VA Home. They were looking for things to keep people busy, or provide social and occupational therapy, both to residents of the home, who tend to be older, and to injured veterans temporarily hospitalized. They now have eight lathes, including two for people who have lost a lot of hand mobility, and a complement of twenty volunteers. “That’s the rewarding part – they are like little kids opening a present at Christmas when they make their first pen.” The volunteers organize a booth at the Arkansas Pen Show selling some pens and taking donations for the project at the home and hospital. This spring, Dupras chatted up other independent makers present at the show and ended up getting donated pens from several, including Darailpenz, Newton Pens, Country Made Pens, Magnolia Pens, Hinze Pens, and Dave Dollar Pens, to give away via drawing to people who had donated more than $25; they raised $2000 for the program.

Six other VA hospitals have come to see the project and ordered lathes to get something similar started, and then COVID locked everything down, so it’s unknown how they have gotten on.

Despite favoring “click pens,” Dupras is not without fountain pens. He was so impressed with the Dragonfly pen designed by Renée Meeks at Scriptorium Pens, with blanks made he made specially for her, that he went out of his way to be sure he got one.

Leonardo also gave him one of the pens they made from a run of his blanks called Alien Moon. “I belong to the pen group in Little Rock, but I don’t have as many pens as most pen people.”

New directions for Dupras might include metal working. “I’m toying with getting an engraver to engrave nibs, finials, clips. I bought a metal lathe.” Starting to work with metal got slowed down a little by the tornados that swept through Little Rock in 2023. “My shop wasn’t damaged, but I couldn’t get into it for three weeks because of fallen trees blocking the steps down to it.” However, there was a silver lining. “I can confirm that blanks can stay in a mold for three weeks and you can still get them out.”

Dupras has always found help from other makers when he needed it. “Anybody I’ve asked has been very helpful.” He’s paid it forward as best he can by helping other makers get started, like Tim Crowe of Turnt Pen Company who’s become a prolific maker of blanks. His bottom line advice is, “It costs more to get into this than you think!” and he shares a bit of wisdom he picked up from Jonathon Brooks: “If you get anything usable out of the first gallon of (resin), it’s a win.”

Bob Dupras’s work can be seen on occasional posts on his Instagram @corrl_creations as well as in the work of many pen makers. Newton Pens in particular has a page of photos of available pens in his resins, and calls out the maker of the resin on many photos of pens throughout the site. (If you see a pen you like, ask the maker where the resin came from! They’re happy to tell you and it’s just a fun thing to know!)

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Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!