Far too often, gadget makers try to entice women by bedecking products with Swarovski crystals and pink cases. We’ve seen it time and time again. It’s most rampant in the wearables sector, where fitness trackers often double as loud costume jewelry (as if you’d ever go to the gym with a faux-gem wrap bracelet on), but still tends to pervade the entire consumer tech industry. The message: To get women to embrace tech, it has to gorgeous, dahling.
These devices for Lexon, by French designer Pauline Deltour, are a notable exception. The collection, called “Fine,” is undeniably feminine---with soft colors and rounded forms---yet manages to avoid the cheap “girly” marketing tricks that have become the consumer tech's default. “Fine” includes a mobile phone charger, a key ring with attached USB drive, a Bluetooth speaker, and a cardholder with a pop-up double-sided mirror. Everything’s made from anodized aluminum, and comes in an array of muted colors, like bronze, gray-blue, and dark mauve.
The French have a word for these highly functional objects: minaudières. Luxury jewelry designer Van Cleef & Arpel gets credit for inventing (or at least designing and selling) the first minaudière, ornamental cases that elegant 20th-century French women would take on the town with them in lieu of a purse. All the essentials---lipstick, cigarettes, money---could fit inside, but the cases were still small enough to keep women from feeling weighted down by a bag.
“Fine” is like a 21st-century spin-off on the minaudière: The cigarette case is now a mobile charger for your phone (from one addiction to another), and the lipstick-shaped canister is a Bluetooth speaker. Deltour's cardholder---sleek and well suited to a future where we all carry a universal credit card---could easily double as a tiny clutch for a night out, or a day-to-day wallet---for women or men.
"Fine" devices start at €18 ($20). Shop the line here.
