My kind of shopping...

 This is the beach shack shop just by our little house.  It has the most beautiful home and gift items and rumour has it it turns over 1 million euro a week in high season.

The owner has a very restrained eye and each piece is chosen because it is exactly the right fit with the vibe of the place (if only I had this discipline with my wardrobe).  She spends the year handpicking the best of everything, so despite the boho feel the prices are quite steep.

 The bikinis just seen above are mainly by Italian brands and are priced around 200 euro, scarves range from 70 to 150 euro each

 The paintings are from a local artist called Abrial, they are all stunning and epitomise the style of St Tropez, food, nature, sea.

 The cork boards that I wrote about here

 Another Abrial original and above a pile of cookery books.

You can also find some beautiful bags from a French brand called Les Habit Neufs, they are exquisitely made from vintage fabrics, unfortunately they cost 300 euro and up, but there is nothing like them around.  These are most definitely NOT, mass produced in China, made to look old, designs, each one is unique and when you pick it up, you can feel the age of them.  They are quite hard to track down though, they don't seem to be available on line and even their website is currently out of action.  Here are some of the designs...

Dress one...Blumarine...big mistake

 

 I had got it into my head that I was too old for anything short, so much to my husband's chagrin, I had packed all maxi dresses (except for this one).

Clearly I have just been in the UK too long, the minute I hit French soil, I saw ladies in the 70s and up in fairly short skirts, including Ivana Trump (approaching 70) and Joan Collins (approaching 80) in bum skimming flippy little beach numbers, that made my maxis feel less elegant and more Margot from the Good Life.

I wore this day one, and looking at the pics can see what a fail it is, the dress is beautiful, Blumarine, incredible quality lace, boned and wrapped to give a really interesting shape with the goddess style, shawl top. But on me, it looks bad.  I think may be it is a little large (I didn't realise that it looked like it was actually falling off as I wore it) and the extra fabric in both skirt and top give me the look of second trimester.  This is one for Ebay/designer second hand shop, since it was pretty pricey.

 Note the skin tone, this is day one (not even an hour of sunbathing,  I had fake tanned that morning to get my week one glow!