Design Showcase: Beyond Beige
Louis Postel
03/01/2005

When Richard Gere spots the samba-ing Jennifer Lopez in the recently released film Shall We Dance, he can’t help but stare at her beautiful, beige-clad belly. So much for the idea that beige equals bland, blah or boring. In yacht décor, the new beige is in fact a purposeful palette of neutral, natural hues from sand to seal, jazzed up by the use of imaginative textures that add depth and richness.
 

Designers Redman, Whiteley, Dixon let Utopia's size make the statement for this Feadship, concentrating instead on providing a relaxing environment. At 212 feet, Utopia is the largest Feadship ever delivered. The neutrality of this salon complements her contemporary profile. (Click image to enlarge)

Adventurous use of color in yacht interiors has its place and deserves praise. But adventure isn’t the only interior décor story. Beiges and other neutral hues reflect and complement the lightness and brightness of the surrounding seas. These subtle tones lend ethereal presence even to the heaviest vessel.

When exploring the new neutrals, consider Lori Weitzner’s stunning new collection for Bergamo Fabrics: silks shot with veins of gold, rippling with shimmering tidal marks, reflecting a Caribbean moon. Sensual, complex and magical, her silks whisper an invitation to be touched (see sidebar).

Creams and beiges are even more compelling when accent colors and lighting play supporting roles. Philadelphia-based designer John Kelly recently outfitted a private vessel in black-accented neutrals that give definition and line to interior space. “There’s so much you can do with accents,” he says. “In addition to cordings, nailheads and fringes, you can affect textures with up-lights, down-lights and accent lights.Outside Los Angeles, craftsmen in the quietly purring J. Robert Scott factory outnumber machines. Sally Sirkin Lewis, who runs this show, is one of today’s leading designers and home furnishings entrepreneurs. Her company has recently teamed with Benetti to create interior concepts for a line of semi-custom yachts (see sidebar).

The palette for yacht interiors that Lewis proposes is quite a departure from the typical formal or “gentleman’s club” look. Rather than dark veneers, regal blues and regimental green and gold, Lewis offers light colors with an air of contemporary sleekness reminiscent of the beach houses she designs in Southern California.

“Neutrals are elegant,” says Lewis. “They provide a room with a feeling of spaciousness. I’m drawn to the serenity they create. They don’t compete with the people or artwork in the room, allowing them to take center stage. A yacht’s natural environment consists of infinite blue and turquoise seas, magenta sunsets, deep green mountains and rocky gray shores. “Why,” she asks rhetorically, “would anyone want a busy interior competing against that beauty.” (Click image to enlarge)
 
Upholstering in neutrals exposes the geometry of a given furniture piece and emphasizes its craftsmanship and quality, according to Lewis. “I often use ebony or a single accent color to spice up a neutral interior. The accent – perhaps a vase of red tulips – provides an interjection,” she says. For the Benetti project, Lewis is relying on black granite and ebonized woods to contrast the neutrals. But she is also known to add a touch of yellow or a punch of periwinkle. Asked to identify this year’s hot neutral, Lewis says at the moment, brown is very fashion forward.When we last saw U.K.-based designer Donald Starkey, he was wearing a yellow shirt. Nevertheless, Starkey is all for beige. Is it boring? “No,” he insists. “If we mixed up all the colors of the spectrum, we’d get a neutral.” His latest neutral-scheme yachts include the teak-paneled Feadship Dream, the blue-hulled Sarah from Amels and Abeking & Rasmussen’s Excellence III. But Starkey warns against going overboard with beiges. “Rather than the basis of a design,” he says, “beige is a help along the way. Clients may have favorite colors you can’t use as the basis for the color scheme, but with a neutral background, they work as accents.

Every trend has its countertrend. Some people tend to lose their bearings when navigating an interior of monochromatic textures and patterns. Fort Lauderdale-based designer Claudette Bonville thinks that most designers who use beige do so because “it’s safe.” Bonville says, “If you are building on spec, you figure that more people like vanilla than raspberry sherbet. So you give them vanilla.” Bonville’s favorite anti-beige combo is aubergine paired with lime green.

But for those who believe their interior décor should be the backdrop to life at sea rather than a dramatic performance all its own, neutrals certainly set the stage.