Gilbert says the price of an interior can add up to 35 percent
of the total cost—compared to about 25 percent 20 years ago. Top designers
command fees of up to $1 million for a 160-foot yacht. Gilbert notes that this
can be money well spent. “These yachts usually take two or three years to
build,” he says. “A good designer can save an owner time and money because he is
often the point of contact between the owner and the shipyard and can make smart
decisions, reigning in the owner when necessary. And certain designers’ names
carry a lot of weight in the resale market.” That was not always the case.
Thirty years ago, yacht designers were viewed as little more than glorified
interior decorators, earning much less respect—and fewer dollars—than the naval
architects designing the hulls. “It was all about the naval architecture and the
utilitarian arrangement of space,” says Gilbert. “On the exterior, you had a
choice of teak or teak. The fabrics were navy blue or, if you really wanted to
be daring, navy blue with white stripes. Nobody thought about the interiors.
That was a question of filling in the space between the walls.” Enter Jon
Bannenberg, a designer who injected fresh air into the stodgy world of yachting
of the ’60s and ’70s by breaking many of the established ground rules of design.
“He figured if you’re spending huge amounts of money for a boat, it should make
a statement,” says Gilbert. By the time of his death in 2002,
Bannenberg and his Burnsall Street studio in London had completed four decades
of making statements in the hundreds of yachts they created. Many, like
Carinthia V, came to be seen as groundbreaking, floating sculptures; Bannenberg
even designed the QE II. Yet, his studio never was pigeonholed into one style of
design. That is partly because Bannenberg’s crew brimmed with diverse, creative
talent like Donald Starkey, Terence Disdale, Andrew Winch and Tim Heywood, all
of them considered among the crème de la crème of today’s yacht designers.
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