Saint-Tropez is a Provençal town, 104 kilometres (65 miles) to the east of Marseille, in the Var department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region of southeastern France. It is also the principal town in the canton of Saint-Tropez. Saint-Tropez is located on the French Riviera. It was a military stronghold and an unassuming fishing village until the beginning of the 20th century. It was the first town on this coast to be liberated during World War II (as part of Operation Dragoon). After the war, it became an internationally known seaside resort, renowned principally because of the influx of artists of the French New Wave in cinema and the Yé-yé movement in music. It later became a resort for the European and American jet set and a goal for tourists in search of a little Provençal authenticity and an occasional celebrity sighting. The inhabitants of Saint-Tropez are called Tropéziens, and the town is familiarly called St-Trop. The port was widely used during the 18th century; in 1789 it was visited by 80 ships. Saint-Tropez’s shipyards built tartanes and three-masted ships that could carry 1,000 to 12,200 barrels. The town was the site of various associated trades, including fishing, cork, wine, and wood. The town had a school of hydrography. In 1860 the floret of the merchant marine, named “The Queen of the Angels” (a three-masted ship of 740 barrels capacity), visited the port. Its role as a commercial port declined, and it is now (2013) primarily a tourist spot and a base for many well known sail regattas. There is fast boat transportation with Les Bateaux Verts to Sainte-Maxime on the other side of the bay and to Port Grimaud, Marines de Cogolin, Les Issambres and St-Aygulf. The main economic resource of Saint-Tropez is tourism. The city is well known for the Hôtel Byblos and for Les Caves du Roy, a member of the Leading Hotels of the World, whose inauguration with Brigitte Bardot and Gunter Sachs in 1967 was an international event. Each year, at the end of September, a regatta is held in the bay of Saint-Tropez (Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez). This is a draw for many yachts, some up to 50 metres in length. Many tourists come to the location for this event, or as a stop on their trip to Cannes, Marseille or Nice. Tropezien beaches are located along the coast in the Baie de Pampelonne, which lies south of Saint-Tropez and east of Ramatuelle. Pampelonne offers a collection of beaches along its five-kilometre shore. Each beach is around thirty metres wide with its own beach hut and private or public tanning area. Many of the beaches offer windsurfing, sailing and canoeing equipment for rent, while others offer motorized water sports, such as power boats, jet bikes and water skiing, and scuba diving. Some of the private beaches are naturist beaches. In June, 1962, Austrian-American fashion designer Rudi Gernreich introduced a topless swimsuit called the monokini that generated a great deal of controversy in the United States and internationally. During Gernrich’s youth, some Austrians advocated nude exercising, which gave him this fashion idea. The Vatican renounced the swimsuit, and L’Osservatore Romano said the “industrial-erotic adventure” of the topless bathing suit “negates moral sense”. In Italy and Spain the church warned against the topless fashion. At Saint-Tropez, the mayor ordered police to ban toplessness and to watch over the beach via helicopter. During the 1960s, the monokini influenced the sexual revolution by emphasizing a woman’s personal freedom of dress, even if her attire was provocative and exposed more skin than had been the norm during the more conservative 1950s. Quickly renamed a “topless swimsuit”, the design was never successful in the United States, although the issue of allowing both genders equal exposure above the waist has been raised as a feminist issue from time to time. In Saint Tropez, Tahiti beach, which had been popularised in the film And God Created Woman featuring Brigitte Bardot, emerged as a clothing-optional destination. The “clothing fights” between the gendarmerie and nudists become the main topic of a famous French comedy film series Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez (The Troops of St. Tropez) featuring Louis de Funès, but in the end the nudist side prevailed. Topless sunbathing is now the norm for both men and women from Pampelonne beaches to yachts in the centre of Saint-Tropez port. The Tahiti beach is now clothing optional, but nudists often head to private nudist beaches, like that in Cap d’Agde.

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