Lecture - Agnès’s “Les Conversations Engagées” Series Welcomes Alix Girod de l’Ain

Alix Girod de l’Ain: “My grandparents came to mind when I started writing this book about Saint-Tropez.”

I met Alix when I was 20. We were both at Assas, studying Information and Communication. We’d given a presentation together on “Politics in the Spotlight,” which brought us closer together. And we laughed a lot. Then Alix got married at 25—it was the kind of beautiful wedding her family had been hoping for, but also a marriage that has stood the test of time with a wonderful man and publisher, Laurent Laffont. He’s always there for her!

We lost touch, caught up in the whirlwind of life, and it was on the shores of Saint-Tropez that we found each other again. Just like the first day. Such is the magic of Saint-Tropez, which makes for new encounters and reunions. The magic of that famous saying that applies to our beloved village: All roads lead to Saint-Tropez! Starting with the path taken by her grandfather, Paul Blanchet—known as “Le Saint-Pathique”—and his magnificent wife, known as “Nanette,” who sailed in from Marseille to drop anchor first at the Grand Hôtel de Beauvallon and then at a hotel we know well: the Hôtel de Paris Saint-Tropez. The first grand hotel in Saint-Tropez.

In 1953, the flamboyant Paul built the first house of what would become, the following year, Les Parcs de Saint-Tropez—a complex of buildings without gates or alarms, where everyone knew one another and ran barefoot from one house to the next. He named it Le Mas du Gaou—in other words, Le Mas du Coq, in Provençal.
Paul, the beloved grandfather of Alix and her two sisters, Anne and Désirée, was the legendary figure of a happy, free, and daring childhood and adolescence.

Thursday 23 July 2026 from 7.30 pm.

Free entry.