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Shipping out
For celebrated French novelist Colette and her third and final husband, Maurice Goudeket, sunny St Tropez had already become unlivable by the time they packed up and left, in the 1930s. “The peaceful village of our first years,” wrote Goudeket, in Close to Colette (1957), “had turned into a hive of tourists. On the wharves a double row of cars hid the view of the port. The yachts had chased away the old boats, the bars had become dance-halls where every imaginable couple stayed on until the first light.”
By the time Goudeket had written those oddly familiar words, a 21-year-old Brigitte Bardot’s sensational turn in the film And God Created Woman (1956) was beginning to make St Tropez singularly synonymous with sexy celebrities and the super-rich. The town and its marina have, of course, become ever more cluttered with unsightly luxury yachts and their jet-setting owners, but reports this month – from The Daily Telegraph to Vogue – suggest that the tide may at last be turning. It seems that astronomical, EU-regulated fuel costs, berthing fees and new European regulations for high taxation on yacht crews have got many vessels weighing anchor and heading off to equally fashionable ports in Italy and Spain – where EU regulations are said to be less strictly enforced.