WORDS
Bryony Smith
It was Coco Chanel who once said a yacht was by far the best place to begin a love affair. Beyond her decade-long affair with the Duke of Westminster onboard his private yacht, the Flying Cloud, the sea proved a lifelong muse for the French couturier and the brand today.
In 1913, Chanel popularised the Breton shirt, a top with French naval heritage and a staple in any yachting wardrobe, while in 2019 the French fashion house launched its own yacht club pop-up in New York. The pinnacle of such a love affair, however, has to be when the brand collaborated with Swedish luxury boatmaker J Craft to create a Chanel J Craft 42” Torpedo in 2022.
Taking to the waters of Saint Tropez, the Chanel Torpedo was part of the fashion house’s “Les Beiges, Summer in Grand Style” campaign and featured creamy interiors and bronzed leather seats to reflect their Healthy Glow makeup products. But it’s not just the quality finish interiors that made J Craft the perfect partner. A high-performance formula requires a collaboration of equal calibre.
Designed to combine power with understated elegance, the J Craft Torpedo enjoys twin IPS600s/IPS650s engines and high speeds of up to 47 knots packaged in a high-end fibreglass hull. With only 27 boats in the world, J Craft boasts an exclusive client profile and it’s not hard to understand why. Each one takes at least a year to handcraft by one of the brand’s Swedish master builders.
Shooting on a J Craft Torpedo in the Hamptons last year, Christopher Whale, art director of industry-leading magazine Boat International, thinks it’s a yacht’s inherent glamour that makes it so appealing to the fashion world. ‘We used a J Craft as the setting for the shoot because we wanted a sophisticated modern-retro look to the pictures,’ says Whale. ‘The mahogany boat, with its elegant, hand-crafted, classic appearance, gave us an instant “golden age of the Riviera” look. Materials like wood and leather suggested a ’30s to ’60s spirit.
‘Boats work for shoots because they create an instant mood of glamour, style and travel, perfect for summer collections where they want to suggest a holiday spirit. And a boat says luxury lifestyle like nothing else. It’s a model’s dream gig. How many times have I been told that! The moment I look forward to the most is when the sails go up, the deck shudders as the bow crashes into the ocean and the yacht starts to keel. It’s the point when most experienced models stop posing, the wind blows their hair uncontrollably and they become gloriously beautiful. That’s when the magic is captured.’
And Chanel isn’t the only brand to put its stamp on the luxury pastime. For its 90th anniversary, Gucci partnered with Italian yacht builder Riva to create Aquariva by Gucci – a 33ft boat with a signature Gucci glossy white coat and twin 380hp Yanmar engines. And you will struggle to find a yacht owner who doesn’t own a piece of luxurious clothing from Loro Piana (their famous Storm System making high quality fabrics such as cashmere completely water repellent and wind resistant).
But no one knows yachting wardrobe essentials better than a yacht builder. Expanding the J Craft universe, owner Radenko Milakovic plans to put their quality craftsmanship to its own-brand fashion label, featuring chic waterproof jackets, as well as quality shooting jackets, that will take the wearer from behind the wheel to Enrico Bartolini’s two Michelin-starred restaurant Glam in Venice.
Just like Chanel, the allure of yachting along the coast is a powerful romantic motif for modern-day designers and boatmakers alike. Today, the siren’s call is answered with a sewing needle and Swedish know-how.
