THE MAN WITH DESIGNS ON A COUNTRY TOWN

       The Marquis de Sade once lived in the French town of Lacoste,a hotbed of Protestantism, built ofcafe au lait -coloured stone and holding the heights across the Luberon River valley from the proud Catholic spires of Bonnieux. He was jailed and institutionalised after the residents of the town objected to his sexual and political views; his castle was sacked in 1789.
       Fashion designer Pierre Cardin,87, seems an odd inheritor. But after he bought the ruins of the castle nine years ago and established a summer music festival in the town,some of the 450 residents of Lacoste, which votes for the left, began to treat him like a hated nobleman, a representative of global capitalism. Nor did it help that he kept on buying properties, even at a fair price.
       Now he says he owns 42 buildings in this picture-postcard village, and he has no patience with the locals who think he is destroying the town. Instead, having sunk nearly 20 million into Lacoste, while employing 80 people in the summers, he thinks he has saved it.
       "I don't understand this hatred of newcomers," he said in an interview."The people hadn't done anything for their village, no sewers, no lights at night, nothing. The village hadn't changed since the '30s."
       Bruno Pitot,25, just landed a job in the kitchen of Mr Cardin's Cafe de Sade. Mr Cardin's presence "has its good sides and bad sides", he said judiciously."I think people are jealous. He's got a lot of money and he started buying all these houses. We're afraid he might close the village!"
       Still, Mr Pitot said he could not afford to live in Lacoste, given rising property values,and when his relatives died he might himself seek to sell his parents' house to Mr Cardin in order to pay the inheritance taxes.
       But what upsets many is Mr Cardin's advanced age."After all, he's 87, and we don't know what will happen after he's gone,"Mr Pitot said."I wish him a long life, of course. But Mr Cardin is someone who wants to go very fast; he only has a little time left.But there are people to remind him that one needs to respect the traditions of the village."
       After World War Two, Lacoste - which has nothing to do with the tennis player and his crocodile shirts - was nearly empty,with fewer than 30 people on the electoral roll. It was a base for the French resistance,and many of the 15th and 16th century structures were in ruins.
       In 1958, an American painter, Bernard Pfriem, went there and fell in love with the setting. He bought a house for very little money, then bought a few more and began to restore them. He was largely welcomed by the villagers.
       In 1970 he started the Lacoste School of the Arts, which later had connections with Sarah Lawrence College in New York. But in 2002, the entire complex of 31 buildings was taken over by the Savannah College of Art and Design, based in Georgia. The Lacoste campus has some 60 students for eight-week sessions and works year-round, bringing some life to the village in the harsh winter months,when the local population drops below 100.
       Mary Scarvalone is the director of the Lacoste campus, which has taken over at least two other buildings while doing careful restoration work."The school coexists nicely with the town," she said, and makes an effort to bring villagers in to campus activities, like life-drawing classes. It also has good relations with Mr Cardin, whose summer festival events cost only 10(490 baht) for students and anyone under 26.
       And everyone tries to keep good relations with Aristide, the trilingual beggar who is known to like a drink and is fond of shouting "I am not a transvestite!" at anyone who will listen. But there is a real undercurrent of anger, too. Colette Truphemus has lived in Lacoste for more than 40 years with her husband, a native."With Cardin and the school, we're not at home anymore," she said."Lacoste is not Lacoste anymore. The houses are too expensive, and young people can't afford to stay."
       The foreign tourists and Parisian visitors as well as the young, mostly American art students keep to themselves, she said, while distorting the town."We only see them at night when they wake us up," she said."It's a shame."
       Another man broke in."It infuriates me,"he said, while refusing to give his name."We didn't need Cardin to eat bread. There was always a bakery." He said he knew Pfriem and liked him."He was an American and a Lacostois, he was authentic."
       Mrs Truphemus has three grown children,all of whom live outside the village."To find work, you have to go outside," she said. But others said her son, Eric, a mason, had done some work in the village but had sometimes been outbid by others.
       An older lady walking by said simply:"It's changed a lot. This is not a Provencal village anymore. Take Rue Baisse," the spine of the town, which essentially runs from Cardin properties like ticket offices and galleries up to those of the Savannah Art College."There are a few iron sculptures, but it's all useless and never open."
       Finnbar MacEoin, an Irish writer, has lived there for three years and is a fierce Cardin defender."Cardin is doing this for them, not for himself," MacEoin said."He doesn't want to be the richest man in the cemetery!"
       Mr Cardin said:"Now it's better with the village. We had to wait eight years! I had hard moments, when I thought,'I'm going to give up, I don't need to do this.' I did this for Lacoste, not for me. I can't even live in all my houses!"
       Mr Cardin said the festival and his projects will go on after his death. But MacEoin has another notion. Offended by what he considers the anti-immigrant tenor of the village,he has written a play, called Camel-Lot , in which he imagines Mr Cardin bequeathing the town to an Algerian Muslim tribe, and Aristide becoming mayor.