Heroes of Naturism : Christiane Lecocq 1911-2015



Christiane Lecocq was regarded as the doyenne of the naturist movement. With her husband, Albert, she founded the world’s first naturist holiday resort in France and spearheaded the International Naturist Federation, an organisation that now has some 16 million members in 38 countries.

She was born on April 6, 1911 in Tourcoing, northern France, and grew up at a time when women were beginning to expose their ankles and arms, but otherwise remained strictly covered up. Naturism, defined by the International Naturist Federation as “a lifestyle in harmony with nature, expressed through social nudity, and characterised by self-respect of people with different opinions and of the environment”, was not invented in France.

Nude bathing had been traditionally practised in Scandinavia and Russia, but it was in Germany that an ideology of social nudity, known as Freikorperkultur (free body movement), originated in the 1870s. The practice was introduced into the rest of Europe, including France and Britain, in the 1920s.

Christiane first came across the practice in 1932, when she was invited to join the Club Gymnique du Nord, a sports club at Fort Seclin near Lille, where members played sports in the nude. It was there that she met her future husband Albert Lecoqc. They married in 1933 but for many years had to keep their naturist activities clandestine. There were no naturist camps or beaches: “We went to a place in the cliffs near Rouen where we were able to strip naked in secret at high tide,” she recalled.

For the Lecocqs naturism was about much more than nude sunbathing and skinny-dipping. It was a way of life: they did not drink or smoke, followed what would now be called a macrobiotic diet, and promoted “social nudity” as offering health and social benefits to people of all classes.

In 1944, during the German occupation, the Lecocqs founded the Club du Soleil France, an underground organisation dedicated to promoting what it called “family” and social naturism, with the aim of establishing naturist clubs in every city in France. The following year they opened a Club du Soleil at Carrieres-sur-Seine, which became an important centre for meetings as the movement grew.

In 1948 they founded the French Naturist Federation and the following year published the first edition of La Vie au Soleil, now the world’s leading naturist magazine. In 1950 they opened the world’s first naturist holiday resort, the Centre Helio-Marin (“centre of sun and sea”) at Montalivet, in the Gironde. Despite initial local opposition, the CHM Montalivet has grown from a simple makeshift camp to the most important naturist colony in Europe, attracting some 20,000 visitors per year. In 1951 the Lecocqs created the International Naturist Federation.

Lecocq continued to promote the cause after her husband’s death in 1969, regularly attending the General Assembly of the French Federation of Naturism, of which she was honorary president. She continued to follow the naturist way of life until she was more than 100 years old, by which time France had become the world’s leading naturist destination, spawning an industry said to be worth 250 million euro to the French economy.

In later years, however, Lecocq felt that the movement had lost some of the idealism of its founders. “Initially, we wanted to live in harmony with nature, to open ourselves to others, to pay attention to our diet,” she recalled – but the development of naturism as mass tourism meant that that spirit had largely gone.

Another one of those heroes you might not know of, but a vital figure in the development of naturism around the globe as we know it today. Christian Lecocq has passed away, aged 104.

We salute all she did for naturism for several decades.


No Swimsuit Day

Dimanche 29 juin 2014, c’est la “Journée sans Maillot”

Sunday, June 29, 2014 is the “Day without Swimsuit”

I’ve previously been aware that Spanish naturists have a day where they promote a ‘dia sin ropa’ (a day without swimsuits -it’s in July) but I’ve just recently learned that the French have an equivalent, a ‘journee sans maillot’.


As far as I’m aware, the International Naturist Federation try to promote naturism by encouraging people (naturist and non naturist alike) to leave their swimsuit at home and just use their birthday suit for swimming and sunbathing, even if the beach is ‘textile’.

I recently heard a rumour that the Spanish variant, in the Vera Playa area, is to include and entire weekend of events, with a nude run through the area on the Saturday, another attempt to break the World Skinny Dip record on the Sunday (the actual ‘dia sin ropa’ -day without swimsuits) and then the nearby water park block-booked on Monday for the exclusive use of naturists. Still waiting for confirmation of this, and still considering us heading out there for that weekend, but I’ve not booked yet. I think it all sounds like an extremely exciting, positive range of events that can only show naturism in a positive light.

Even if we don’t make it out for the weekend, we’ll certainly be covering both the French version in June, and the Spanish version, in July here on SLN!


please note: if you hear of other national naturist associations doing anything similar, let me know and we’ll do our best to a) keep the readership informed and b) do our usual ‘replication in SL’ coverage.

British Naturism

OK, after years of simply not being bothered (i.e. the entire length of my now almost two decade long love of naturism) I signed up and joined British Naturism.


In terms of ‘organisation’, naturism is probably in decline to an extent. Younger people don’t join clubs, not because they’re more conservative or shy than their parents and grandparents generation, but because ‘organisation’ isn’t what it’s all about. To them, ‘naturism’ is the opportunity to simply go naked at a beach if they choose to, without the need for rules, membership fees or anything else. And to some extent it’s a battle already won, by their parents and grandparents, to ensure that their right to be naturist exists.

Today, many many countries have naturist beaches, swim nights, campsites, hotels that exist unremarked. That said, it’s a hard won fight, and one that could just so readily be eroded unless we continue to band together and create a platform for our hard won rights. Many years ago I would probably have needed a British Naturist card (or International Naturist Federation card) to even gain entry into a naturist event. To some degree, that remains the same and would almost certainly be the same for my husband were he to decide to take in a swim night in another part of the country while on business and unaccompanied by me.

A side benefit of membership, for SLN purposes, will be that we can keep on top of forthcoming events. As SLN has evolved, we’ve tried to reflect RL naturist activity and place it in a SL context, so hopefully we will be able to further identify events and reflect them in the blog. I’ve already spotted that BN are doing a holiday in El Portus, in Spain, and I’m/we’re tempted! I’ve never been to El Portus and it’s something I’d like to experience.