Lauren Collins

An ongoing debate in France complicates the notion that there is an overarching secret to raising kids à la française.

Paris has been blanketed by posters for vière, a mix of vin and bière drunk from a wineglass, whose name, its creators say, started out as a joke.

“Flatten yourself against the wall if a car comes,” Invader told me. He wriggled past a phantasmagorical fern. “You always get some crazy plants, with all the carbon dioxide from the cars,” he said. Our destination was a forty-foot-high concrete pillar that supported a smaller road passing over the A4. Traffic raced by at eighty miles an hour. Invader rummaged in the underbrush, trying to find a pair of polypropylene supermarket totes, filled with supplies, that Mr. Blue had tossed out of the va…

Yet, just as sabermetrics transformed baseball, data is coming for fashion, supplementing the hemline index—the theory that skirt lengths rise and fall with the stock market—with data lakes, traffic-share analyses, and lots of graphs. The other day, Alexandra Van Houtte, the Bill James of the catwalk, was sitting in a conference room in the Ninth Arrondissement of Paris. Her company, Tagwalk, is known as “Google for fashion.” But, instead of typing “weird rash” or “post office hours” into its fr…

The restaurant is called Les Grands Buffets. A week or so later, I went to its Web site, and entered my e-mail address to receive a secure link to make a reservation online. It was late July. The next available table was for a Wednesday in December, at 8:45 p.m. “We remind you that this reservation is non-modifiable, you cannot change the number of guests, the date of the meal, the hour of the meal, or the name of the beneficiary,” the confirmation e-mail read. If I wanted to bring children unde…

Wading into a sewage-filled river isn’t exactly up there with hot dogs and fireworks as an Independence Day tradition. But what’s more American than a splashy stunt? On the appointed morning, Stratte-McClure, who lives in Paris for part of the year, stood on a cobblestoned ramp leading down to the water. He was dressed in shorts, a red Stanford T-shirt, and a blue Columbia Journalism School hat. “Macron called the elections to avoid having to swim in the Seine,” he joked. With a showman’s flair,…

In 1746, a vessel called the Prince de Conty foundered off the coast of France. How did its most valuable cargo end up in the hands of a semi-retired Florida couple?

The Courters live by the water in Crystal River, Florida. They have three children and eight grandchildren. They are semi-retired and own a production company that makes documentary and educational films. Phil builds things and plays the banjo. Gay writes. She is the author of eleven books, ranging from “The Beansprout Book,” which, according to her Wikipedia page, “introduced beansprouts to American supermarkets and the general public,” to “The Midwife,” a best-seller in 1982. Her most recent n…

Viewers of the new documentary “I Am: Celine Dion” know just how hard-won the pop superstar’s rumored comeback at the Olympics would be.

The country has long been a haven for those who believe nudity is a virtue. A new exhibit explores the movement—and lets guests strip down themselves.