Extracts

The Ultimate Life - by Dylan Jones, editor GQ

It’s early October, and I am walking along the polished and scrubbed boardwalk in Port de Cap D’Ali in Monaco. It’s Friday evening, bang in the middle of cocktail hour, and the dipping sun is still pursuing the lazy Mediterranean. There is simply no better place to experience an Indian Summer, especially when you’re about to spend a weekend luxury-yacht-hopping. Monte Carlo has long been the playground of the rich and the famous, although these days you’re really not rich or famous enough if you haven’t got your own boat.

This particular weekend has been rebranded Swarovski Fashion Rocks Weekend by the principality, as Monaco is playing host to the Prince’s Trust most glamorous event, Fashion Rocks, sponsored this year by Swarovski – a star-studded evening featuring every important fashion designer – Calvin Klein, Armani, Versace, Burberry, Cavalli, Prada etc – and some of the world’s most exciting pop stars – Bon Jovi, Blondie, Mariah Carey, the Kills, Craig David, Jamie Cullum to name only a few. The event is on Sunday, but to make Monaco a destination locale for the weekend, various Prince’s Trust supporters have made their yachts available for the great and the good. And me.

Tomorrow night, along with dozens of fashion designers, journalists, celebrities and photographers, I will be the guest of Philip Green, swanning around his enormous boat, quaffing chilled, vintage champagne, scooping up caviar and hobnobbing with the likes of Prince Albert, Jerry Hall, Simon Cowell, Vivienne Westwood and Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne.

Tonight, however, I’m the guest of Nick and Christian Candy, the uber-trendy London property developers, whose bespoke 45m yacht Candyscape has its own berth in Monaco harbour. It really is the most remarkable beast, a floating luxurious bachelor pad of immense proportions. The walls are covered with specially commissioned silk, the ceilings with platinum leaf. Limited edition Jo Malone candles are everywhere (even in those places you don’t expect there to be limited edition Jo Malone candles), the air is full of recently sprayed (bespoke) perfume, and there’s a butler at the bottom of every staircase (and there are a hell of a lot of staircases on Candyscape). There is a mahogany dining table that flips open to become a full-sized roulette table, dozens of enormous wall-mounted wafer-thin top-end plasma screens, and state-of-the-art 3G mobile phones on every table. There are blondes in barely-there Versace skirts (“deck furniture,” according to the crew), middle-aged men in dark suits barking into BlackBerrys, and dozens of gorgeous lithe young models shipped in from Milan, Paris, New York and Hong Kong for the Fashion Rocks event. Linking the three decks, the atrium reveals the art deco influence of Candyscape’s sumptuous interior design. The staircase is clad with faux crocodile embossed leather and complimented by hand-stitched leather balustrade and wall panels. A bronze insignia is inlaid into the floor and an original Richard Hudson sculpture sits proudly on its central plinth. Mounted on one of the walls of the middle deck is the six-knife belt that Halle Berry wore in the Bond movie Die Another Day. No, I’m not quite sure why the Candys would want such a thing, but it here seems to make perfect sense, hanging over a buff sofa like PoMo alternative to a stag’s head. It’s also a nod towards the world outside, a world not quite so manicured and perfect.

Each of the boat’s five guest bedrooms exalt in the iconography of luxury sea travel. Here, built-in cabinetry is treated with a hand applied lacquer glaze, wall panels are covered in yet more paper backed Indonesian silk and cashmere throws are on hand for those occasional chilly evenings.

Ironically, one of the biggest talking points is one of the upstairs cloakrooms – well, a loo actually - which has been covered in a vast, old Louis Vuitton trunk, complete with leatherwork, stitching, buckles and handles. Designed by Candy & Candy creative Brigitta Spinocchia, Nick and Christian’s tailor-made loo is indicative of the kind of idiosyncratic bachelor pad touches they specialise in. They are detail freaks, and it shows. Everywhere. There are Art Deco fittings on every floor, huge Helmut Newton prints on every wall, a Jacuzzi on the upper deck (24 hours later, Philip Green’s Jacuzzi would be filled with – overflowing with – caviar), a B&O solid-state sound system, broadband Internet access, the sort of stainless steel fridges you tend to find in top-end restaurants (full of vintage Krug and other prestige champagne, natch), a security system to die for (if you get my drift), and electronic wardrobes big enough for even the most excessive and voluminous Savile Row collection.

Candyscape is a perfect example of modern luxury lateral living, a super luxury yacht that looks like a Belgravia apartment. A very big Belgravia apartment. In Nick Candy’s own words, Candyscape is ‘a temple to space, light and opulent design. We want to be a global super-luxury brand. People are going to be able to have a Candy & Candy yacht or jet or home. The home furnishings market is so fragmented. Ikea has done it for the mass market but there’s nobody who’s managed to become the Gucci or Hermes of home furnishings. That’s what we are going to do.’ If James Bond ever needed a floating home, then this is it. He wouldn’t be alone, however, as a luxury yacht is the new way of saying, ‘I have arrived. And then some.’

Yachts have become the only place that some fashion photographers really want to work, principally because they embody the ultimate luxury lifestyle. They also embody the GQ lifestyle, and whereas years ago the ultimate in luxury would be personified by a private jet, these days it’s a luxury, bespoke boat. They are the ultimate boy’s toys, and there is no better way of displaying your conspicuous consumption. Not only are you completely unavailable for the world’s paparazzi, but you’re also untouchable too. Even in the most exclusive villas and resorts, even if they’re enclosed and gated, you are susceptible to the outside world. But not on a boat. Oh no. On a boat you can do anything you damn well like, and no one will ever see you. It is perhaps why they have become so associated these days with so much debauchery; hedonism these days either happens on a boat, or it happens in the newspapers.

Yachts have also been embraced by the luxury goods industry, and where once it was enough to launch your new product at a Formula One race track, or in the grounds on as especially plush stately home, today the favoured location for the launch of a serious piece of luxury kit is a big fancy boat looking very regal and very smart in the middle of the Med.

The Superyachts - by Jim Gilbert

There is far more to yachting, and to this book, than the beauty so transparent and obvious in every large yacht. In fact, it’s easy to be so overwhelmed by the trappings of yachts and yachting – the finely faired and painted hulls, the gleaming stainless and rich brightwork, the fantastic array of antennas and electronic hardware, the glittering social events and famous owners and guests – that the underlying human dimension of yachts, the reasons why they exist in the first place, somehow become trivialised and lost in the simple process of seeing them.

The very first yacht has long been lost to history. While some historians attribute King Charles II’s little 52’ English sloop as the first craft built solely for pleasure, I suspect that boats were being built to satisfy their owners’ passion for the sea and to express their notions of beauty for as long as man has owned tools capable of felling and splitting trees and hollowing out logs. After all, though men are born of the land, our blood is nearly the exact composition of sea water. This fact is not a romantic metaphor for our affinity with the sea, but proof that in our deepest cellular memory and genetic origins we are creatures from, and of, the sea.

So it makes sense that from the earliest moments in history man has had what more than one person has described as a “magnificent obsession” with boats and being on the water. The sea has always provided food, the safety of territorial boundaries, and the means for lucrative trade as well as inspiration and renewal. From the Phoenicians to the Vikings to the most modern cultures, the ability to use the sea for harvesting, trading and expanding territory has, more than any human skillset, determined the success of human society. This helps explain, in part, man’s constant need to improve upon the shape, form and sophistication of his vessels to increase their speed, capacity, range and comfort.

But man’s fascination with the sea and boats goes far beyond the horizon of the utilitarian. One has only to look at dolphins playing on ancient Greek urns, stately ships etched into royal Egyptian tomb walls, or serene marine scenes from the oldest Chinese ceramics to appreciate that our modern compulsion to be on the sea or at the sea’s edge is as old as mankind itself. The sea has always nourished, inspired, and challenged every facet of our being, from the practical to the aesthetical to the philosophical.

Tom Wolf’s famous quip that the more things change the more they remain the same has become almost a tenet of the modern age, with its instant global communications and skyrocketing technology. However, many observers of the world of yachting, particularly of the most luxurious end of the recreational boating spectrum, find it hard to see how Wolf’s famous dictum applies in drawing comparisons between the world’s earliest vessels-for-pleasure and the sophisticated, mind-boggling floating palaces of today. Take as a modest example the exquisite 190’ schooner Coronet, currently being restored in Newport, RI at the International Yacht Restoration School. Built for Rufus T. Bush, she is the last remaining example of the Gilded Age of yachting and in her day was the queen of sailing yachts. When she was launched in 1885, she was hailed as a marvel of luxury yacht construction, with her stained glass partitions and saloon large enough to hold a piano. Yet, like all vessels of her day, she burned oil for light, contained no bathrooms, running water or sewage system, no auxiliary propulsion. Only later was her first human comfort “system” installed, a simple coal-fired boiler, that permitted remote space heating and hot water for occasional baths.

By comparison, consider any of Coronet’s sister yachts launched a mere hundred years later. Today’s yachts are virtual floating cities, with secondary sewage treatment plants, massive power generators, advanced satellite communication and navigation systems, space-age construction and sophisticated propulsion, including fully automated sail-handling. Today’s yachts both sail and power are capable of self-contained non-stop voyaging around the world in a degree of safety and comfort unimaginable three decades ago, let alone several thousand years ago when an aboriginal first whiled away the long winter nights by adding polished abalone insets into the stem of his fishing canoe, or the first Egyptian monarch commissioned a gilded barge to voyage up the Nile to get away from the pressures and hubbub of palace life.

Perhaps because we can now voyage to the moon as well as sail over the far horizon, large yachts today beg the question of purpose and relevance. In a world still haunted by poverty and disease – as well as the marvels of modern medicine and instant global communications – yachts can stand out as iconic examples of conspicuous consumption. Yachts stun onlookers with their excess as well as by their overwhelming beauty and sophistication, and in the process raise the legitimate question of how much is enough.

Perhaps some of these onlookers would find it strange and even ironic that someone like me, who has spent nearly three decades promoting and celebrating luxury yachts would find legitimacy, inspiration and even comfort in answering this question. In fact, the answer points as much to everything that is fine and noble in the human spirit as it does to man’s continued blindness to the pain and suffering of his fellow souls.

Consider, if you will, the enormity of the task of building a luxury yacht. Consider not just the final product or the millions of dollars or Euros of cost but the hundreds of people and the thousands, nay, tens of thousands of critical practical, aesthetic and technological decisions that must be rendered to ensure each project’s success. Consider that more than half of the cost of a custom yacht consists of wages for the welders, woodworkers, electricians, piping and plumbing installers, engineers, architects, designers, stonemasons and painters without whose combined contributions there would be no yacht. A typical custom 160-footer requires 400,000 man-hours or more to build, far more than a typical skyscraper, jumbo jet or luxurious home. That yachts get singled out as excessive has more to do with the nature of the objects – their essential inutility, for lack of a better word – than merely cost. The fact is that we need planes, houses, massive public buildings. One can argue that we need libraries, proud governmental monuments, even large cruise ships, all of which can cost more than a large yacht. But nobody can argue – even the most passionate defender of yachts and yachting, including myself – that anyone needs a yacht.

But it is precisely the lack of any necessity for its existence that makes a yacht special and, I would strongly argue, in many ways marks the height of human achievement. It is only when a yacht is looked upon or compared to an essential item that its excessive nature emerges. However, when one compares a yacht to more equivalent objects – think about the Eiffel Tower, a beautiful cathedral, an old palazzo, a Japanese garden – it becomes more an object of art, a complex and sophisticated expression of beauty, a moving sculpture, if you will, than a mere excessive possession. While they are private residences, and the privacy or exclusivity of a yacht certainly contributes to its image of excess, they are also built to be admired and enjoyed by everyone who sees them. If this were not so, few would spend the additional millions required to render a yacht’s sweeping lines, to fair and paint the hull and polish each piece of exposed stainless steel to a mirror finish.