The Girls of the Riviera

If you belong to that international fraternity of peripatetic young males who enjoy following the girls who follow the sun, you'll find the Riviera's sundrenched beaches and coastal highlands the happiest possible hunting grounds for the female of the species. From the tiny seaside village of Le Lavandou, at the western tip of France's resort-studded Côte d'Azur, to the naval port at Spezia, some 200 miles away on the easternmost fringes of Italy's fashionable Riviera di Levante, you'll always be within arm's reach of an eye-filling array of bikini-clad femininity. The Riviera's contingent of female sun worshipers is almost as unlimited as it is uninhibited, and the young male with a modicum of loot can afford to be as discriminating as he chooses in selecting companions with whom to share his itinerary.

Far from being a homogeneous group, the girls of the Riviera are as diverse a collection of beachcombing beauties as you could ever have the good fortune to encounter. In fact, during the height of the resort season, which extends from early January through July, only a third of the female population on the Côte d'Azur is even French born. Instead, it's the climate-conscious northern European girl and her adventure-seeking American sister who comprise the majority of this international playground's tanned-torso set. Not until late summer do the majority of vacationing femmes françaises flock to this Mediterranean mecca of sunshine and seminudity in search of a new skin tone and the right male companion to admire it.

In addition to being the spice of every man's life, variety is one of the intriguing qualities that has helped make the Riviera girl a creature of universal appeal. She probably spends most of her year in London, Paris, Frankfurt, New York, San Francisco or even Minneapolis, Stockholm, Madrid, Rome or Lisbon. She may be a Balkan ex-princess whose parents fled to western Europe before the Iron Curtain was drawn tight, or the daughter of a wealthy Oriental merchant who emigrated from Indo-China when the French army was defeated in 1954. Or she may be one of the myriad aspiring actresses who roam the Croisette at Cannes, hoping to be discovered by some international movie mogul. She might be a recent graduate of Stanford or Sarah Lawrence whose unsuspecting father is convinced that an extended Mediterranean holiday is just what his little girl needs to broaden her outlook. Or perhaps she's the typically intense young art student who annually pays homage to the gallery exhibits at Antibes, Biot, St.-Paul and points east. Her background and interests are likely to be as unpredictable as womankind itself. But whether the Riviera girl of your choice hails from Seattle or Saigon, dances at the Lido or clerks for a stuffy (text continued on page 126)Girls of the Riviera(continued from page 101) British barrister, gambles at Monte Carlo or spends all her waking hours on a water cushion at St.-Tropez, it really doesn't matter. For once she's ensconced at her favorite strand along the Côte d'Azur or her favorite sidewalk café overlooking the Ligurian Sea, she becomes a member of that unique and eminently desirable breed of female: the Riviera girl.

If one were asked to single out the qualities that separate the Riviera girl from the rest of her gender, the first characteristic that would come to mind is her nonchalant unself-consciousness among large crowds while adorned in the absolute minimum of clothing. It's possible to trace the origins of this female cult of maximum exposure back to a bright afternoon in 1927 when actress Ina Claire crashed the gate of the swank Juan-les-Pins casino wearing only a translucent pair of beach pajamas. From that day forward, the Riviera girl has had but one all-consuming goal: the public display of her body.

With the advent of the bikini in 1946, the Riviera girl carved a permanent niche for herself in the annals of anatomical history. For the girls of the Riviera, the bikini became much more than just an accepted uniform. It became their bond, their banner, their symbol of sartorial, social and sexual emancipation. Year after year, American swimsuit designers who eschewed the bikini had tried unsuccessfully to will this brain child of the Riviera's couturiers into obscurity. But the Riviera girl could not be put off. With each new trip to her own particular Riviera stomping grounds, she took along a new—and briefer—bikini, displaying her increasingly revealed charms on well-attended public beaches, even ambling up to—though not quite through—the doors of the better casinos.

In accordance with the Riviera girl's endless quest for maximum exposure of her natural gifts, the St.-Tropez designers began several years ago to feature a new and daring line of bikinis that sported a low-cut bra wired beneath milady's bosom, for maximum uplift and outthrust. This move undoubtedly established the precedent for the introduction of that latest boon to Riviera mankind: the monokini. A descendant of America's topless swimsuit, the even more abbreviated monokini met with intransigent opposition from local law enforcers. This time, they felt, the Riviera girl had definitely gone too far.

Or so it seemed until a pretty 21-year-old Parisian gym teacher named Claudine Durand arrived in Cannes early this year—to be arrested for wearing nothing more than a fairly modest monokini while engaged in a fast round of ping-pong outside the tent of an enterprising beach concessionaire. Her ensuing trial and conviction on charges of being "an outrage to public decency" would normally have been enough to quell the ambitions of other girls with similar proclivities in beachwear. But this was the Riviera, and Claudine's fate became a cause célèbre. Appealing her case to the Aix-en-Provence appellate court, Claudine was acquitted when the judges concurred, with classic Gallic gallantry, that "the spectacle of the nudity of the human body has nothing intrinsic in it that would outrage normal, even delicate decency"—thus paving the way for a dramatic increase in bare-bosomed beauties who will make their annual pilgrimage to the Côte d'Azur this summer. The next logical step in socially acceptable Riviera beachwear—already taken on remoter beaches—will undoubtedly be nothing at all.

There is yet another common character trait peculiar to the girls of the Riviera—one which has always been of invaluable aid to the companion-seeking male traveler who frequents these female-flooded shores. For reasons best known only to herself, the Riviera girl is a remarkably sedentary creature. Wherever she makes her pad along the resort-studded Côte d'Azur, she tends to stay—a fact of Riviera life that enables the male suitor to acquaint himself with the divergent backgrounds and tastes that separate the typical girl of St.-Tropez from her curvacious counterpart in Cannes. The only migratory influences the Riviera girl adheres to are those dictated by age: As she grows older she tends to move her beach blanket eastward along the coast in search of a slightly less frenetic habitat. This progression is so gradual, however, that it may well take her 20 years to move a mere 30 miles up the coast; but it does help explain why the girls tend to be a few years older and wiser at each resort along the Côte d'Azur.

Once the resourceful male tourist has familiarized himself with the Riviera landscape and, more importantly, discovered which brand of Riviera girl habituates each of the pleasure stops along his coastal itinerary, he should be able to distinguish the subtle differences between a Nice girl and her Antibes sister with little more than an approving glance. Heading eastward by car, the venturesome newcomer begins his researches into the mystique of Riviera femininity at Le Lavandou.

A rather unprepossessing little community, Le Lavandou has the good fortune to be the port from which ferries taxi back and forth daily to the Íle du Levant, Europe's famous nudist sanctuary. Habitués of the island who elect to greet incoming guests at the public dock are obliged to wear what the French aptly call un minimum. It consists of a tiny triangle of cloth held in place with string. After traveling a suitable distance into the interior, however, le minimum is cast aside and couples are free to carry on their daily activities in the same manner in which couples have been carrying on since Adam discovered Eve.

Back on the mainland, it's only a few kilometers' drive from Le Lavandou to the town that Bardot made famous: St.-Tropez. Ever since that summer when ex-hubby Roger Vadim took his young bride and a camera crew down to this previously remote fisherman's paradise to film And God Created Woman, "Saint-Trop" has reigned supreme among Riviera resorts as the uninhibited arbiter of feminine fashions for the entire Côte d'Azur, and the favorite jumping-off spot for thousands of would-be BBs who begin training early for their hopeful roles as future monarchs of Mediterranean womanhood.

By nature, the average St.-Tropez female tends to be young, impressed with all things artistic, habitually broke, ready to swing at the drop of a bongo drumbeat, and an ardent devotee of la vie bohème. She usually dozes all day on the beach, draped in little more than a thin coating of Bain du Soleil, then suddenly comes alive after dark, when you'll probably find her in deep discussion at one of the beachside coffeehouses, dancing with abandon to the rhythms of a back-alley bistro's jazz combo, or heading, perhaps, toward some secluded spot on the beach for a moonlight swim—sans suit—with the lucky young man who has managed to capture her vivid adolescent imagination for the evening. Day or night, more often than not, she exudes that inimitable aura of provocative pubescence that has helped furnish St.-Tropez with its reputation for being one of the swingingest spots on the Mediterranean since the last days of Pompeii.

For those who care to add an occasional touch of elegance to their beachcombing, St.-Tropez also caters to a slightly more formal, but no less fetching, crowd of feminine wonders. Members of the Riviera's jet set arrive by yacht in August; meet at L'Esquinade and Mouscardins (the latter being the area's only purveyor of haute cuisine bearing a Michelin two-star rating); buy the latest in sports and beachwear stylings from Choses or Madame Vachon's, St.-Tropez' two leading fashion emporiums; then head for the same tiny boites and bistros frequented throughout the year by the low-budgeted bohemian beauty and her guitar-playing beachmate. If you hope to cash in on the annual appearance of these better-bred darlings of the Riviera, you'll have to work fast, for their stay is generally brief, and they soon weigh anchor and retreat en masse to the same seafaring milieu from whence they came.

From St.-Tropez, you may elect to make a few casual pit stops on your way to that wildest and wackiest of all Riviera resorts: Cannes. If so, your comprehensive study of the Riviera girl will best be served by short stopovers in such residential communities as Ste.-Maxime, St.-Raphaël and Miramar. Here the beaches are considerably smaller and more private, the local female population less transient and a trifle more reserved. The girls who live in these small municipalities are often the offspring of French aristocracy. Needless to say, any attempt to strike up a ménage à deux in such company must be made with the utmost tact and sophistication. Playing the Continental will be well worth the effort if you should succeed in persuading one of these well-bred provincial lasses to invite you for a weekend sojourn at the family manor and a leisurely tour of the verdant and admirably secluded countryside.

Then comes Cannes. Since its emergence as an international film center with the inception of the annual Cannes Film Festival in 1946, this thriving playground for femmes fatales has become the unofficial capital of the Riviera. The festival kicks off a summer season of similar cinematic celebrations that last until the Venice Festival in September. During those two frenetic weeks in May when Cannes is besieged by major producers, directors, stars and hordes of aspiring young actresses, you can be assured of finding more than your fill of exotic damsels from every port of call. When the city's opulent Palais du Cinema opens its Grand Salle to the screen elite and their cinemaphilic admirers, the Riviera girl is at the height of her allure and never out of sight. This hectic holiday brings out the best, as well as the beast, in most Riviera girls, and you can take your pick of Munich models, Danish ballerinas, American exchange students, and the comeliest of comrades from Moscow—many of whom will be ready and willing to partake of the pleasures of festival time with an enterprising young male who shares their taste for la vie joyeuse.

If your schedule includes Cannes in May, it's best to plan ahead and arrange for the most strategic accommodations. Setting up your temporary bachelor headquarters at such hotels as the Carlton, Martinez, Réserve Miramar or Gray d'Albion will put you in the enviable position of having to travel no farther than your main lobby to surround yourself with a plethora of potential female partners for the day. The "day," in this case, will consist of a quick dip in the Mediterranean followed by a midday snack at one of the myriad sidewalk eateries along the Croisette, after which you'll repair to your digs to change into something suitable for the busy and bacchanalian evening ahead. Your Riviera girl for this particular evening will probably enjoy starting off the night's divertisements with a trip to one of the nearby cinema houses which offer continual showings of the festival's many filmic candidates for the coveted Golden Palm Award. Then it's time for a sumptuous repast at Drap d'Or or Chez Félix, both of which feature large dining terraces overlooking the sea. After dinner, you and your date can take a long drive along the beach to the outskirts of town for an all-night session of terpsichorean frenzy at the Whisky à GoGo.

Although the film festival marks the season's high point of revelry along the Riviera, the rest of the year in Cannes is far from unrewarding, especially in terms of abundant and accessible distaff vacationers. If you'd prefer to avoid the heavy crowds and sky-high prices that prevail in May, you can bide your time until the annual regattas start in summer, or take in the Mimosa Festival in February. No matter when you arrive, it always seems to be holidaytime in Cannes. The girls are always the cream of the international crop, and most have descended on the beaches with but two goals in mind: a tan and a man—but not necessarily in that order.

For the most part, the Riviera girl prefers Cannes because she can mingle there with the scions of wealth and elegance. She may not be able to afford more than a buttered brioche for breakfast, but at least she'll have the satisfaction of eating it in the shadow of the Hotel Carlton or the Grand Casino. But despite her usual lack of funds and her taste for the blandishments of the good life, the typical Cannes female is not an expensive or demanding creature. Of course, she won't object if you insist on taking her to a fine restaurant or buying her a bagatelle to remember you by, but she'll probably be amply appreciative if you offer merely to share your beach blanket and treat her to a liter of pink Provençal wine—or even, as is often her whim, a cold Coke. The Riviera girl is in Cannes strictly to have a good time, and she'd rather have it with a considerate and attentive young man of modest means than spend her evenings alone.

Leaving Cannes behind, you'll quickly bypass the tourist traffic at Juan-les-Pins and make your next stopover in Cap d'Antibes. Most of the girls who frequent this elegant spa are previous habitués of some other Riviera setting. There is no set type of female to search for here; Antibes is the closest thing to a melting pot of Riviera femininity that the Côte d'Azur has to offer. Almost every Riviera girl decides to go there sooner or later—and usually to the Eden Roc. Perched atop a rocky promontory, this lavish seaside caravansary features an Olympic-sized swimming pool, natural-rock diving platforms, scuba diving, snorkeling, and a host of other aquatic appurtenances. At this most democratic of Riviera resorts, Europe's café society traditionally rubs wet shoulders with the bronze-skinned beauties of Cannes, the straight-haired "Zazies" of St.-Tropez, and the cool-eyed divorcees of Cap-Ferrat and Monte Carlo. And if you tire of meeting your attractive Antibes companion at Eden Roc's well-populated poolside, you can always suggest a more artistic afternoon setting in which to conduct an intimate tête-à-tête: the local Grimaldi Museum, famed for its incomparable Picasso collection, to which many couples go daily to strengthen their cultural bonds and interpersonal contacts.

Bohemianism reappears between Antibes and Nice along the Cros-de-Cagnes, but it's slightly more refined than that exhibited by the teenage temptresses of St.-Tropez. The girls at Cagnes are Beats from the better brackets, and many of them are the friends, fiancées, daughters and mistresses of better-known French and British film producers and directors who have their villas in nearby St.-Paul and La-Colle-sur-Loup, two adjoining communities that comprise a sort of Riviera-type Beverly Hills. Whenever the sun is out, which on the Riviera is practically every day between breakfast and cocktails, you'll usually find an arresting assortment of these uninhibited upper-bohemians taking the sun totally au naturel on the sands at Cheval sur la Plage, the nearest private beach to their palatial hideaways in the surrounding hills.

On to Nice. The girls here are very much like those you'll meet in Cannes; most of them are endowed with the same sybaritic appetites, but there are subtle shadings that help differentiate the two. The average Nice girl is slightly older—about 22 as opposed to 19 or 20. She dresses in high fashion; her hair is always impeccably coiffed; and her interests are, as a rule, on a slightly higher intellectual plane. While Cannes is basically an overgrown village whose perennial party atmosphere has rubbed off on its visiting hordes of bikinied beachcombers, Nice is a major city of France. Its cosmopolitan attitudes have had their effect on the female citizenry. The girls of Nice are more likely to be found in the great indoors—in the fashionable casinos playing chemin de fer and sipping Grand Marnier—than outside on the terraces where their Cannes counterparts tend to establish their evening's beachhead.

The astute male visitor to Nice can greatly enhance his opportunities for finding winsome weekend travelmates if he remembers to take along—of all things—a set of skiing duds. With the resources of a typical Riviera resort at her disposal every day of the year, the Nice girl will probably be overjoyed at the idea of being invited for a snowbound holiday at Auron or Valberg, two of the closer year-round Alpine winter playgrounds that can be reached by car within a few hours. And if you should happen to run across one of those few French females who isn't as at home in ski pants as she is in her bikini, all the more reason for asking her to the Alps.

Monte Carlo, your last pleasure stop along the French Riviera, has managed to retain its legendary reputation as the permanent playground of the idle rich, despite the fact that its beaches have long been accessible to the general public. This is the last—but far from the least—resort along the Côte d'Azur for the majority of Riviera girls who began their Mediterranean meanderings years ago among the sun-worshipers of the Ile du Levant and the swinging cellar set at St.-Tropez. Now they are no longer girls. The typical female devotee of Monte Carlo's strand has long since passed into womanhood, but she can still wear a bikini with an air of natural grace and allure that any St.-Tropez ingénue would envy. After all, she was around when the fashion began. She is the grown-up child of the Riviera's exposure explosion; all that's been added is that special appeal which comes only with seasoning.

The height of the Riviera rites at "Monte" accompany the annual arrival of the jet set in January for the Monte Carlo Rally, and the steady stream of incoming Ferraris and Lotuses continues to crowd the streets of Prince Rainier's tiny domain until late May, when the Grand Prix de Monaco caps off the season's festivities. But the poolside pulchritude at the Hôtel de Paris is a year-round local attraction; and although the BBs of Saint-Trop and the Claudia Cardinales of Cannes have given way chronologically to the eternally desirable Juliette Grecos and Bella Darvis of this perennial meeting—and mating—grounds for Côte d'Azur femmes, Monte Carlo and its chic casino clientele will provide you with a host of heart-warming memories to include in your romantic researches.

Crossing the Franco-Italian border at Port-Saint-Louis, you'll pass through a rather arid stretch of Riviera frontier that takes in such tiny, sun-washed Italian resorts as Ventimiglia, Bordighera and Ospedaletti. Aside from a gentle economic renaissance recently begun at the last, where new pensiones and a luxurious new hotel—Le Rocce del Capo—have been built at the edge of the sea, you'll find these spots rather dated and generally unsuitable for purposes of female pursuit. Immediately to the east, however, lies the first of the Italian Riviera's major pleasure points, San Remo, followed by a 150-mile stretch of equally effervescent spas at which to continue your quest of Liguria's loveliest.

The girls of the Italian Riviera are a much less polyglot congregation than their Côte d'Azur counterparts. Most of them are pure-blooded Italian ragazzas, easily identifiable by their dark eyes and sensuous mouths, their slightly less abbreviated bikinis, their provocative olive complexions—and their attractively full-blown figures. You will find this intriguing Italian version of the Riviera girl in magnificent profusion at the open-air bars of San Remo's Excelsior Hotel and Santa Margherita's Capo de Nord-Est, sipping sweet red drinks or nursing cups of hot espresso; the Riviera signorina is fundamentally a nondrinker. She is at her bountiful best in the evenings, when she appears elegantly attired at the many waterfront cafés and trattorias which form the focal point of night-life activity in such resort locales as San Remo, Diano Marina, Alassio, Savona, Portofino and Levanto. For the girl of the Italian Riviera, style is a fetish, and she spends a far greater proportion of her hard-earned lire on clothes than does her Côte d'Azur cousin. Typically, she takes great pains to ensure that her beach hat is of the latest and most expensive fashion, that her slacks are the exact shade of pastel her ensemble requires, and that her public image is best fitted to arouse the ardor of even the most jaded male admirer.

Though the majority of Italian girls manage to preserve their innocence until they marry, the Italian Riviera draws more than its fair female share of unattached Slavs, Scandinavians, Rheinlanders, Anglo-Saxons and Americans who are less interested in being chaste than chased. But they tend to be a trifle more sedate and selective—though no less uninhibited—in their pursuit of pleasure than those who flock to France's shores. Organized night life on the Italian Riviera consists mainly of digging dubbed-in movies and listening to strolling troubadours; thus, with little else to do after dark but pair off, Italy's Riviera girl wants to make sure that she winds up with the male admirer who merits her evening's undivided attentions.

The first and foremost female population explosion along the Ligurian coastline occurs with seasonal regularity on the beaches of San Remo, Italy's bohemian equivalent of St.-Tropez, in the heart of the Riviera di Ponente (Coast of the Setting Sun). With the tourist trade as its raison d'être, San Remo entertains an unending stream of bikinied beachniks who lie in multitoned rows along its white-sanded strand and promenade each afternoon up and down its palm-lined drives and amid the Mediterranean flora of its many public parks. At dusk, you'll find the average San Remo girl in animated conversation at the Bagni Lido Bar or the Canadian Tea Room. Later in the evening, your best bet would be to single her out from among the throngs of twisting Tyrrhenians who frequent the crowded back-street discothéques of the city's quaint old quarter. But wherever you locate her, she'll probably be receptive to your offer of an anisette or a Galliano. A show of good manners should pave the way for a memorable, if fleeting, friendship.

Another must on your Ligurian itinerary is Genoa, the New York of the Riviera. Like the girl you left behind in Nice, the typical Genovese is a sophisticated native of the Riviera, and her tastes are generally more cultural—and more expensive—than those of other Ligurian females. Her favorite haunts are the myriad sidewalk cafés and emporiums that line the Via Roma, Genoa's cosmopolitan counterpart of the fashionable Promenade des Anglais in Nice. It will probably take a little more time—and a lot more loot—to impress your favorite Genovese companion, but she's likely to shower you with the same warmhearted affection that has made the Italian girl among the most sought-after Circes on the Continent.

Farther east, along Italy's exclusive Riviera di Levante (Coast of the Rising Sun), you come to that cluster of seaside village resorts which cater to the yachting set and to the better-heeled class of Riviera ragazzas: Portofino, Santa Margherita and Rapallo. Here you'll encounter the same luxury-loving brand of sensual sun followers that you dated at Eden Roc or Monte Carlo. In Portofino, they congregate at poolside and barside in the lavish Hotel Splendido to make plans—and strike up acquaintances—for the evening. Just around the Portofino promontory lie the other two playgrounds of this resort triumvirate, Santa Margherita and Rapallo, whose beaches offer the most appealing assortment of bikinied, monokinied and no-kinied Riviera girls to be found anywhere along the Italian coast.

A perfect way to end your tour of the Ligurian landscape is to charter a hydrofoil from one of the boating concessions at Portofino and, with a water-spritely feminine companion as your first mate, follow the coast down to Riomaggiore and the eastern end of the Italian Riviera. You'll then be an hour's stroll from the internationally famed Cinqueterre vineyards; a late-afternoon sampling of some of Italy's finest vintages should put your seafaring partner in the right mood for the moonlight voyage back to port in Portofino.

In the final analysis, it won't really matter whether your Riviera travels take you nearest and dearest to the girls of St.-Tropez or San Remo, Monte Carlo or Portofino; for it's only the nearness that counts. When the time comes for au revoirs and arrivedercis, you'll understand why fellow beauty lovers everywhere hail this shimmering seacoast as a land of incomparable delight.