Door Covered in Ken Dolls, Lures Me Into the Men's Room, and Begins

TIME WELL SPENT

in F, in Paris's 13th arrondissement, s the world's largest tech incubator.

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ROXANNE VARZA pushes open a Such is Station F, where Varza door covered in Ken dolls, lures me is director. It's the world's larg• into the men's room, and begins est tech incubator, housed in an IN THE LAB knocking on stalls, looking for a 111,550-square-foot converted vacant one. "Here," she says on Parisian freight train station that's a third try. "Open it." In contrast as long as the Eiffel Tower is high. to the gray, antiseptic bathroom, It opened in June 2017 with 1,000 OF LUXURY the stall is an opulent oasis, as if founders and uncanny timing: Alexander McQueen had designed That same month, President Em• Rejecting the hegemony an outhouse. Varza pierced the manuel Macron unveiled a new of Silicon Valley startup culture, stunned silence: "This startup is tech visa program and a mission these rebels are stirring called Trone. We do things very dif• to make France "a startup nation." tech's soul. By Richard Morgan ferently here." While Station F hosts Amazon, t»

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>£> Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, those blue chips are boilerplate behemoths on tech cam• puses these days. Much more inter• esting is the presence of two French megabrands: L'Oreal, the cosmetics giant, and LVMH, the umbrella group covering Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Hennessy, Sephora, TAG Heuer, and many more. [Clockwise from top] LVMH CEO L'Oreal, which made its first- Bernard Arnault inspects ever tech acquisition in March, a Euveka mannequin. runs a Station F atelier of nine L'Oreal's Sillages delivers a concierge parfumeur beauty-oriented startups. Down to your mailbox. the hall, LVMH's venture—La A lavish lavatory Maison des Startups—has 89 fromTrone. workstations for 23 startups (50 by November). These are not Facebook killers. But while these burgeoning firms are unlikely to change tech financially, interviews with more than a dozen of them suggest something bolder: the abil• ity to revolutionize tech tonally. While many startups are dreamed up by Bay Area brogram- mers as a means of easing and simplifying entitled bachelorhood, Or L'Oreal's Sillages, which bined revenues in 2017 exceeded the luxury thinking of L'Oreal and sends personalized perfumes $80 billion. And their digital pres• LVMH suggests room beyond la Warby Parker-style for custom• ence is booming. At L'Oreal, for vie en bros for a new digital dialect, ers to sample before deciding. As example, e-commerce represents a kind of tech couture. Instead of founder Maxime Garcia-Janin says, 8% of overall revenue, but in China scale, specificity. Instead of disrup• "Choosing a perfume off a piece of it's 26% of sales. tion, finesse. An understanding paper is like getting married before "We don't just want to put luxury that customers are as sophisticated you kiss." Not only does Sillages shopping online. We want to make as founders, and that nothing shatter the monotony of a room full online shopping luxurious," says tailor-made is stuck in beta. Why of Chanel No. 5 wearers, but cus• Ian Rogers, LVMH's chief digital move fast and break things when tomers worldwide suddenly have a officer, an iTunes alum. you can bask in refined crafts• concierge parjumeur in Paris. For her part, Varza spent Sta• manship? Who ever stopped to Others navigate traditional tion F's debut year hyperaware of optimize the roses? CES-style thinking: Beautigloo's Silicon toxicity—misogyny at Uber, Consider LVMH's Euveka, for cosmetics microfridge or Daumet's the notorious Google memo, and example, which replaces wooden proprietary technique to make hate speech on Facebook and Twit• mannequin torsos with robotics shiny white gold. At Heuritech, an ter. "Who wants another Silicon that can adapt to a client's specific image-recognition trend detec• Valley?" she asks. "Thank God we measurements. "We were amazed tor, eight of its 24 employees have can be different." For all of Silicon that in 2018 the industry standard Ph.D.s in artificial intelligence. Valley's range, it's broadly a haven is still wood," says sales manager Of course, without Station F, for naysayers who see the world as Eva Moudar. Euveka frees design• L'Oreal and LVMH would not broken without them. At Station F, ers and tailors to expand their exactly operate out of garages in by contrast, where there's a will, clientele to any body. Sunnyvale. The companies' com- there's a ouais. J

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