Sleep in a shop: the French town breathing new life into its high street
19.10.2023 - 16:07
/ theguardian.com
/ Christian Dior
It’s certainly an eye-catching shop window, full of interesting artefacts – an old sewing machine stands poised over a sheet of leather, with an oil lamp on one side, ancient shoe moulds on the other. There’s more leather hanging above, with footsteps cut into it. I step into the Tannerie, then lock the door behind me.
I’m not here to shop, but to sleep in the appealing apartment inside it, with an inviting living room leading up several steps to comfortable sleeping quarters. A kitchenette and a swish modern shower room complete the picture. It’s spacious, tastefully decorated and better than many hotel rooms – yet a fraction of the price, at €75 a night.
One of half a dozen former shop premises which have been given a new lease of life, the Tannerie is part of a new scheme called BedinShop, aimed at regenerating the medieval town centre of Romans-sur-Isère, about 90 minutes south of Lyon in France’s Drôme department. They include a bookshop, a tailor’s and a laundry, but the Tannerie is particularly significant: this town of 33,000 inhabitants was once the capital of luxury shoemaking in France. Charles Jourdan - who partnered with Christian Dior - and Stephane Kélian - who worked with Jean-Paul Gaultier - were among the town’s factory owners.
When production moved to less-expensive parts of the world and out-of-town supermarkets attracted business away from the historic centre, much of Romans-sur-Isère literally shut up shop. The situation prompted BedinShop founder François-Xavier Chambost to act. “I was walking along streets that had been buzzing with shoppers when I was a child, and I saw young people fighting, piles of old wooden pallets and empty shops,” he says. “I wondered if the youths could be taught to make furniture from the pallets that we could then use in shops converted to overnight accommodation.”
A walnut trader at the time, he got the town hall and social workers on side, gained invaluable business knowhow through French organisation Villages Vivants (living villages), and convinced local landlords to invest in their properties in return for guaranteed rent. His first venture, the Bouquiniste (Bookseller), opened in April 2019 in a shop that had been vacant for 15 years; the sixth, L’Apothicaire, opens soon.
They’re all beautifully decorated. It helps that Francois-Xavier’s wife, Cynthia, is an interior designer. “I try to give a soul to each one and reflect it subtly in the interior,” she says. Using a mix of upcycled charity shop finds, donations and some serious creativity, she has worked her magic in the apartments, incorporating original features such as exposed stone, vaulted ceilings and archways.
There are fun details throughout, with an old Singer sewing machine fashioned