“I have a thing with patterns!” Christian Leyk of coquine![design] admits. “I’m not talking about blue and white strips or the obvious leopard print. I like subtle ones. That can include the odd animal as well, like zebra or tiger, but the trick is to keep the contrast low. It can be the difference between clear and bead blasted glass. Or matt versus polished metal.”


In this case the designer experimented with tinted glass inserts to add life to the high gloss hull of the 50 metre open concept ‘Tigress’. The idea was that the pattern would only appear from certain angles at certain light. It would, in parts, also appear at night, when some of the inserts out themselves as portholes. This way, the hull would appear almost as a solid entity (as opposed to a hull perforated with portholes), but it would be far from being boring. “It could have been just stripes of course, but then we thought, why not try something really new? This yacht is supposed to be a different animal!”

The rest of the design followed swiftly, an almost monolithic deckhouse and a shiny metal structure for radar, antennas and navigation lights. Does it need more than that?

The interior has not been developed further than initial sketches, but it will certainly be very much in line with the exterior. Clues have been taken from automotive design, so we might expect a cool mix of leather and carbon fibre and we might even get a glimpse of the engine. And the performance? Let’s just say it’s not a coincident that part of the styling was inspired by the Lamborghini Gallardo…