Laurent chooses carefully, and then he commits. He drives a 90's Defender with a manual gearbox and not a single screen: purposeful and timeless. His cafés are furnished the same way. The tables, chairs and lamps are chosen by hand in France, each made by true artisans, and shipped across the Atlantic. Nothing is there by accident.

Devota was made for that kind of man. We choose our pieces the way he chooses his, one at a time, for their craftsmanship, their heritage and how long they will stay with you.

Laurent lands in San Francisco in 1984, eighteen years old, with a windsurf board and a devotion still looking for somewhere to land. At the shop where he works, a young salesman keeps pulling up in a Porsche 911, paid on commission. Laurent decides on the spot that this is the job for him.

Five years later, at a trade show in Las Vegas, Jake Burton Carpenter asks whether he can snowboard. Having only just started, he swears he has done it forever. The handshake becomes twenty years with Burton and an early bet on Nixon watches. In 2010 he walks away at the top. In 2014 he opens the first Moulin, in a strip mall between a dry cleaner and a cigar shop. Twelve years and eight locations later, the neighbourhood is still coming.

Laurent also runs, every day at dawn. After countless marathons across the world, more than one career’s worth of success and a family he is proud of, he still begins each day as if it were the first.

It is that devotion that inspires us at Devota: to keep pushing forward, to offer only the very best, and to dress men like Laurent, who give themselves to their craft, their family and a life of meaning.

For the men who devote themselves every day.

Photography and words by Léo Vaucher