How did the Moleskine notebook get its name?

Here is an article that tries to explain the origin of the name, but doesn't quite get there.

The name “Moleskine” has been a source of some confusion. As nearly as I can determine, the derivation is as follows. There’s an ordinary English word, moleskin, which, as you might guess, originally referred to the skin of a mole. About a century ago, the term was extended to apply to a type of cotton fabric that looked and felt a bit like natural moleskin. Strictly speaking, the oilcloth that’s used for covering notebooks is not moleskin—it isn’t fuzzy—but for whatever reason, that’s what it’s called. When moleskin migrated into French, it picked up an e on the end, which would have given it the pronunciation “mo-l?-SKEEN.” Be that as it may, the name is now a trademark of the Italian company Modo & Modo, which complicates its pronunciation for us poor foreigners.

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/124614-moleskine

Moleskine is the heir of the legendary notebook used for the past two centuries by great artists and thinkers, including Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Bruce Chatwin.

It was produced by a small French bookbinder, that supplied Parisian stationery shops frequented by the international literary and artistic avant-garde for more than a century.

In the mid-1980s, however, it no longer became available. In his book "Songlines", Bruce Chatwin tells us the whole story of his favourite notebook, which he nicknamed "Moleskine."

More history:

http://www.moleskine.com/en/news/bruce-chatwin-s-notebooks