by Louis Postel for Showboats International | September Issue 2015

So many yachts to see, so many galas, events and exhibits to attend,  – with more berths than ever at MYS, now celebrating its 25 year!

How to make serious decisions under these circumstances, decisions conceivably  involving many millions? How to focus on the bottom line when Port Hercules carries us aloft in its ever-sparkling effervescence, its heady mix of laughter and heart-felt reunions, newly-made and now treasured-forever acquaintances, its yarns and tall tales?

For many visitors, that paradox between doing serious business and celebrating a way of life is what makes the MYS experience like no other in the world.

Nowhere does this paradox express itself in more tangible form than in the furnishings and luxury i on items on display. Beautifully-crafted, classic in design, modern in temperament – they’re clearly serious objets. At the same time they exhibit their own unique flair, a personality that greets their owners with a gracious salute and a smile.

Turn on Your Love Lights

What could be more gala, or romantic, than starry lights limning the contours of a yacht? How they playi off other, distant harbor lights,  crystallizing in the very constellations wheeling slowly above?? In 2011 uber lighting designer Yann Kersali partnered with Baccarat to create these wireless Jallum Candlelights. Now Jallum’s latest iteration features a USB cord and removable charging base. This four lightstick model $4,600, in black or white from http://www.baccarat.com| 800-777-0100

Share a Monaco Moment

While serious decision-making and celebratory moods presents one paradox at MYC, the tension between elegant and casual presents another. Designer Romeo Sozzi of Promemoria nicely resolves this  latter paradox with his Lake Como-inflected Menaggio deck chairs of maroon-stained ash wood and a lightly-hued strip of bronze. We would venture to guess that whoever sits conversing in a Menaggio can’t help but be serious and  celebratory both.  www.promemoria.com

Taste the Butter Side of Rich

 

This china collection by Robert Cavalli resolves yet another paradox: the seemingly opposed desires for luxuriousness and richness as well as for restraint and good taste. Here we have icy veins of platinum lacing through porcelains’ austere Artic whiteness, relieved by an artist’s hand with bold colors and textures in lizard, leopard  and Renaissance motifs. From Monaco-based Boutsen, prices on request. http://www.boutsen.com

Remember Fondly the Office Left Behind

A building where millions are daily made and lost can take architectural seriousness to exponential heights, an exercise in cutting and pasting one level of design on another, ad infinitum. How one wonders can there be anything glamorous or fun about these masses of identical glass? Leave it to furniture-maker David Linley to wave his wand and make the transformative magic happen. His latest line of Lightscape furniture features opalescent mother of pearl reflecting in syncopated rhythms through the windows of his miniature buildings. There’s Sunrise, Noon and pictured here Dusk in the form of a £90,000 Cocktail Console, which Viscount Linley executed in ash burr, dark grey eucalyptus and black sycamore veneers, surfaced with a shimmering silver leaf panel of the map of London.  http://www.davidlinley.com/

 

Marry some High-Touch to your High-Tech

While Art Nouveau celebrated nature with organic shapes, its successor, Art Deco, celebrated the machine age with a burst of stylized  geometry:  zigzags, lightning bolts, sunrays and aerodynamic curves. Paradoxically, Art Deco’s glamorization of the machine manifested itself through  master craftsmen hand-working luxe materials.  .  No one did this better than  Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann (1879-1933), whose work has now been faithfully reproduced by one of Larry Ellison’s preferred craftsmen, Frank Pollaro. This hand-polished Fluted Sideboard comes in genuine Macassar ebony, with torpedo-shaped legs, nickel pulls, sabots and accents. Size is 80″ long x 20 1/4″ deep x 42 1/2″ high, price on request. http://pollaro.com/