The future of luxury

Superyachts are often cited as being the ultimate showcase of craftsmanship, artisanal skill and bespoke design. But that we need to add a fourth arm, because superyacht interiors are at the forefront of another growing trend – sustainable luxury. If you’re not quite sure what that means, it’s where what was once cherished as the ultimate finish – a rare wood, an exclusive type of leather – is being replaced by exceptional new sustainable materials that are being created from hemp, fruit skins, recycled plastic and any number of other innovative processes. It’s not only becoming big business, it’s set to be the next great trend in fashionable interior design, driven by a wave of eco-conscious designers.

As Andrew Winch – founder of Winch Design, one of the original and certainly one of the most iconic yacht design studios – says, green innovation is being elevated to the forefront of sustainable yacht interior design. “We have designated in-house what I call an investigator into ecological products,” he enthuses. “She spends her time researching all over the world the items that have the most ecological footprint, from manufacture, from not using child labour to material use and product, and then it spreads out like a cobweb to all of our projects.”

Making moves

It’s a move that is being mirrored all over the yacht industry as the sector looks at how to reduce its carbon footprint. For Alessandro Pulina, CEO of Pulina Exclusive Interiors, the drive to create sustainable luxury has led to an exciting new programme which he has called Aligned With Sustainability, which seeks to investigate, develop and promote eco materials for interiors to show that the superyacht industry can embrace sustainable change and still produce extraordinary, luxury finishes.

“My idea was to make a substantial and very realistic contribution to the choice the boating industry must take to show where it stands,” Pulina asserts. “This sector is already doing a lot of work by reducing consumption and emissions to protect the planet’s seas and oceans, but we need to do more. The use of new biotech materials in yachting interior design plays a key role – oranges, lemons, figs and hemp are among the materials that will increasingly be used in sustainable design.”

Collaboration is key

It is important to realise that Aligned With Sustainability, while initiated by Pulina, is not a solo project – it draws on the expertise and forward-thinking impetus of several key Italian companies who have essentially joined the project as development partners. Those include lighting company Cantalupi Light Engineering, who started using energy efficient LED lighting back in 2005 and who promoted an event in Monaco where the project was presented to clients and the press. Then there is Artep which makes custom carpets from natural materials.

Venturing into more unusual ground, Ohoskin joined the project – a Sicilian company that transforms orange and prickly pear by-products into an alternative material to animal skin; Rada, which produces textiles from natural fibres and recycled materials; and VGHN, a Tuscan company that processes hemp. Further, the AWS project was born with the Sant’Anna Institute of Pisa. “What these companies illustrated is a perfect framework in which to combine our contemporary creative design with their materials,” Pulina says.

The enthusiasm is shared by those partner companies. “Ohoskin started with the idea of using a patented circular economy,” the company’s CMO Alessandro Scuderi has said. “We only use regenerated products, resulting in a fully recyclable material.” It is here that luxury and sustainability combine.

Awareness of superyacht owners

There’s a key reason – beyond our own social responsibility – for the superyacht industry to get on board with sustainable luxury initiatives, says Pulina, and that’s because the world is waking up to the importance (and the optics) of creating as minimal an impact as possible. It’s also true that the money available from superyacht clients keen to invest their own capital into developing new products and materials has a beneficial knock-on effect for the wider consumer market. What’s more, Pulina points out that the age of the average boatyard customer has dropped significantly in recent years, and it is mainly customers in the 35-45 age bracket who are buying pleasure boats.

“These are environmentally aware buyers, informed about the most innovative safeguard systems, curious to learn more and aware enough to want to do their part in reducing environmental impact,” Pulina offers. “The yachting industry is in the middle of this transition and is tackling it by developing innovative technical solutions and using sustainable products,” he continues. “Involved in this green revolution, however, are not only the industries but also the governments, legislators and above all consumers, who must be the first to be given the right stimulus to understand in which direction we need to go today.”

A future for superyachts

Pulina and the Aligned With Sustainability partners are certain in the need for such projects because, they say, it is becoming increasingly urgent to push the foot on the accelerator and get closer to concrete solutions that intervene to save our planet from wild pollution that is seriously jeopardising the future of the next generations. The major players in the nautical industry are aware of this, they add, and in a sector that is not easy to go green, are spending resources and energy on targeted investments that support research in the right direction to make a strong and significant contribution to environmental protection. “Everyone is conscious of the goal set by the UN Agenda and the EU Green Deal of climate neutrality by 2050,” Pulina confirms, “an ambition that is necessary and cannot be ignored.

“For the moment,” he concludes, “I can say that yacht interior design is preparing to soon welcome ideas and projects born from a synergy of intentions and skills that will put the protection of the planet and human health at the centre of an ambitious project in a sector that has been waiting for something truly revolutionary for so long.”