While Oceania has not appealed to me in the past, with MARINA that might be changing!

Ernie

Ernie

Marina’s top suites capture Ralph Lauren style
Featured Stories

Friday, 11 December 2009 11:16

The trio of Owner’s Suites on Oceania Cruises’ new Marina will be appointed with the Ralph Lauren Home collection, from furniture and fabrics to lighting and bedding. The idea is making the top suites feel like ‘a luxurious estate home,’ said Oceania president Bob Binder.

New York-based Tocar Interior Design was tapped because of the award-winning partners’ familiarity with the Polo Ralph Lauren aesthetic, Oceania executives said today at a launch in a Ralph Lauren showroom in Manhattan.

Susan Bednar Long, co-founder and president, previously oversaw the decoration of flagship retail stores for Polo across North America. Christina Sullivan, co-founder and vp, began her career at Polo in the store design department, where she launched Double RL Collection Shops across the U.S.

Marina’s three Owner’s Suites, more than 2,500sq ft each, are designed with large foyers to give an impressive entry. Walls of inset Georgian wood paneling hold art niches on either side. An ivory marble entryway with a David Hicks-inspired black and camel mosaic tile inset is surrounded by black carpeting trimmed with a polished nickel edge.

The foyer also contains a mahogany bar with ivory leather and chrome stools, burnished silver armchairs covered in faux crocodile and brown and white faux zebra skins and an oversized chaise in front of floor-to-ceiling windows. An ebony baby grand piano serves as the room’s focal point.

The living and dining room, with a full wall of windows giving aft views, is intended to convey the ‘clubby and refined elegance of a world-class yacht,’ Oceania said. Macassar ebony-veneered chests with silver hardware topped by faux zebra-framed mirrors flank the entrance. Walnut herringbone wood flooring rings camel carpeting.

A suede L-shaped Modern penthouse sectional is positioned in the corner. To its side is a mahogany Anglesey end table and oversized Mayfair armchair. A Planar brushed stainless steel and acrylic coffee table centers the seating area, where a 42-inch flat-screen TV in part of the entertainment console. A mahogany Mayfair dining table provides seating for six.

Wrap-around teak-covered verandas hold furniture custom-crafted from Ralph Lauren in white marine lacquer.

For the bedroom, Tocar designers used ivory wainscoting and silvery grey carpeting, and covered the walls in Austyn cashmere. The Bel Air bed is in mahogany, flanked by City Modern bedside chests. A Mayfair mirror adorns one wall.

The room has a Ralph Lauren Highbridge desk, a Noble Estate settee in taupe leather and two Hasley slipper-chairs in a light gray cashmere wool blend. The marble master bathroom offers a separate shower and soaking tub and a mahogany double vanity topped with double portholes.

Seatrade Insider understands that Oceania’s Binder and Prestige Cruise Holdings chairman and ceo Frank Del Rio have been making the rounds of Manhattan’s top designer showrooms this week so there may be more designer touches to come on the newbuild.

quote:

---

Originally posted by eroller:
From Seatrade Insider:

M
New York-based Tocar Interior Design was tapped because of the award-winning partners’ familiarity with the Polo Ralph Lauren aesthetic, Oceania executives said today at a launch in a Ralph Lauren showroom in Manhattan.

S.

---

I thought Yran and Storbratten were the designers unless Tocar is just decorating the suites?

quote:

---

Originally posted by desirod7:

I thought Yran and Storbratten were the designers unless Tocar is just decorating the suites?

---

Y&S are acting as the coordinating architect - overseeing all the technical aspects of the interior design and the 'big picture'. Tocar designed the Owner's Suites and Oceania's in-house design team is handling all other aspects.

quote:

---

Originally posted by jetwet1:
I guess I am a social climber and wannabe then

Though that zebra skin rug can go.

---

Bruce Peter: a design professor, maritime author and egghead from LinersList is much more critical.

What happens is that there is a herd instinct to fashion when people are uncomfortable with their own tastes. In my business manufacturers will get a tastemaker to sign a collection regardless of how ugly it is. The nouveau riche compete to be the first on the block to get one and the others follow.

There are younger, less established, and much more talented designers out there, but do not have the name so their stuff does not make the shopping malls.

The college I went to www.pratt.edu has a noted fashion design department and keep up with some of my classmates who were in the program. Some are merchandisers, others custom clothing designers. Their normal dress is jeans and sneakers. When going out their outfits are not what you would pick up on Rodeo Drive or Ceaser's Palace mall, but individual looks that are unique yet esthetically pleasing.

quote:

---

Originally posted by desirod7:
Ralph Lauren: He is a recycler. His staff peruses every fashion magazine since the Guttenburg press and re-introduces whatever is on the bottom of the fashion cycle with a slight twist. Are bobby socks next? The social climbers and the wannabes lap it up.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Thad:

I actually think it is the true wannabes and social climbers that think they are "above" him.

---

Thad, you are missing my point. It is not just Ralph Lauren, but anyone who jumps for the fashionable label just for the label alone. Point is people should not have a herd mentality in admiration or compliance with who is the starchitect or fashion label of the moment if it does not personally fit.

RL: Actually I am below him, he could buy me out anytime. I live in a very posh part of Philadelphia and often design for their homes. It is the new money that wants the designer label regardless if it fits, where the old money buy, furnish and wear what they like.

Social register? I know a few too, many have schizophrenic kids from all the inbreeding.

If Carolyn Spencer Brown said Cunard was so last year and Carnival is the cruiseline to be seen on it would be ridiculous
for Cunard lovers to hold their nose and swallow for Carnival.

see http://www.socialclimbers.net/

[ 12-16-2009: Message edited by: desirod7 ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by eroller:
A vast improvement over the decor on the current Oceania ships

---

My first impression: Oh, great; lots of beige and tan. I know that's stylish in U.S. homes these days, but I got tired of it a long time ago.

I am looking forward to more renderings, and of course the finished deck plans.

Ernie

From Seatrade Insider:

quote:

---

Oceania’s Marina will be lavished in Lalique

Featured Stories
Thursday, 17 December 2009 23:18

Oceania Cruises has commissioned Lalique, the French artists of jewelry and crystal, to design a grand stairway for the reception area of the new Marina.

The stairway will feature double curved staircases and a balcony with balustrades of crystal medallions and scrolled iron. Six crystal pillars rising from the landing adorn the two-story, glass elevator surround. A mahogany handrail tops the brass banister.

At the base is Lalique’s Cactus table surrounded by etched crystal screens and flanked by newels capped with crystal finials. A Lalique vase with fresh flowers will grace the table.

Oceania president Bob Binder called the grand staircase an icon aboard all the ships of the fleet so special attention has been given to this area of the Marina. He called Lalique ‘a fixture of timeless, elegant design.’

Lalique sculptures and crystal accessories will also be displayed throughout the ship as part of Marina’s multimillion-dollar art collection.

Itineraries for the 1,258-passenger Marina, under construction at Fincantieri’s Sestri Ponente yard, will be announced in coming weeks, with reservations to open in January.

---