The interior of superyacht is even more of a design challenge than his renowed furniture, but boats are inspiring Christian Liaigre to award-winning heights of bespoke brilliance.

A new furniture showroom is opening in the spring at Conduit Street in London’s Mayfair (taking the global total to 20) while a Paris-based specialist yacht studio (headed by Guillaume Rolland, his studio manager) opened its doors  in December. But Liaigre insists that no one of these enterprises has anything to do with building an onternational brand.

«We focus on every project individually». He tells. «Many designers want to impose their style, but we have the opposite way of thinking. This is not a pret-a-porter. We do not mass produce».

Liaigre’s painstakingly bespoke approach has won him high praise in the relatively new waters of luxury yacht design. Of the handful of maritime projects he has completed so far, Vertigo, the 67 metre ketch built by Alloy Yachts and launched in 2011, has won four prestigious prizes.Seahawk, a 60 metre Perini Navi sailing yacht, claimed the holistic design gong at this year’s Showboats Design Awards. «every time we design a boat we win many prizes,» says Liaigre, «so I suppose we are not so bad.»

Все эти обьекты обьединяет  нечто общее – aesthetic of restraint, of quiet elegance, of subtle luxury, in which space, air and light are treated as the most valuable commodities. His color palette is almost without exception, sparse, his use of pattern non-existent. Materials, be they a tropical hardwood, a raw linen, or an Italian marble, are selebrated in their purest form. There is not a superfluous decorative element, nor a nod to passing fashion, in sight, but a simple gesture towards comfort and tranquillity.

“I am not interested in being international brand”, states Liiagre, “The intellectual and creative work we do would be compromised if the studio became too big. I have to maintain a creative focus. This is haute couture: the couturier can only make a small number of dresses with hand-sewn diamonds. He is limited by his art and his art is made more desirable by its limitations.”