There’s an address in Saint-Tropez you need to know. Not a restaurant, not a club, not a gallery. A workshop, rue Clemenceau . It’s there that Rondini has been making sandals since 1927 .

Not “designed in Saint-Tropez and made elsewhere.” Made. By hand. In the shop. The same one for almost a hundred years.

The first sandal maker

Dominique Rondini opened this workshop in 1927 . He is the first sandal maker in Saint-Tropez. At the time, the village was not yet the destination we know today. It was a fishing port. Dominique set up his workbench, his tools, his leathers there. He cut, he sewed, he sold. All in the same place.

The “tropézienne” didn’t yet have a name. It was just a sandal. A few leather straps, a flat sole, a bare foot. The essentials.

Colette walked through the door

In the 1930s and 1940s, Saint-Tropez began to attract a different kind of clientele. Writers, artists, actresses. Colette came to Rondini for her shoes . So did Marlene Dietrich .

One could make it a selling point. Transform the shop into a museum, frame photos, print quotes on boxes. The Rondinis do none of that. The workshop still looks like a workshop. It’s a place of work, not a set.

The transmission

In 1983, Alain Rondini took over the business from his father . Third generation . Today, Xavier, his son, is also there . Four generations who have passed down the same skills, on the same street.

Alain has been recognized as a master artisan since 2008 . It’s not an honorary title. It’s the recognition of a level of competence verified by the chambers of trades. The kind of distinction that cannot be bought.

Leather and twelve months of patience

The detail that distinguishes Rondini from all the rest is the sole leather. Tanned with oak bark for twelve months . Not twelve days, not twelve weeks. Twelve months. Traditional vegetable tanning, the kind that takes the time it needs.

The result is a sole that develops a patina with the foot, that molds to its shape with use. Not molded synthetic, not chrome flash-tanned leather in a few hours. Material that has matured even before meeting a foot.

Each pair is cut, assembled, and sewn by hand in the workshop . The last workshop in the Var to work like this . The others have closed, relocated, or automated. Rondini continues by hand.

The label and its limits

In 2023, the workshop obtained the Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant (Living Heritage Company) label . It’s official recognition of rare savoir-faire. A state stamp that says: here, something is made that is almost no longer made anywhere else.

Does the label really protect? That’s another question. The EPV doesn’t block real estate speculation that drives up rents on rue Clemenceau, nor the competition from industrial sandals stamped “tropéziennes” without ever having seen Saint-Tropez. The label states what is. It doesn’t prevent what is coming.

The anti-model

Rondini is a family SARL . Turnover of approximately 1.8 million euros . Two addresses on rue Clemenceau . No shop in Paris, no corner in Galeries Lafayette, no aggressive e-commerce.

The models are designed, manufactured, and sold exclusively in Saint-Tropez . To buy Rondini, you have to go to Saint-Tropez. It’s a choice. The kind of choice no one makes anymore.

One might find it limiting. One can also find it radical. When a brand refuses to grow beyond what its hands can produce, it’s not a lack of ambition. It’s the ambition to remain exactly what it is.

The question that remains

K’Jacques, the other Saint-Tropez sandal maker, was founded a few years after Rondini, in 1933 . Two workshops in the same village, almost a hundred years old, making the same object. It’s rare. It’s fragile.

The question isn’t whether Rondini makes good sandals. That has been settled for a long time. The question is how long an artisanal workshop can survive in a town where commercial square meter prices are exorbitant. Where tourists want a logo, not leather tanned for twelve months.

Dominique Rondini set up his tools at 18 rue Clemenceau in 1927. The family has been there for almost a hundred years. Same street, same gestures, same leather. It’s the kind of constancy you almost never find anymore. And that’s exactly why we need to talk about it.