Eye Opener
Ari’s Bar, Christina
After the Second World War, Greek shipping magnate
Aristotle Onassis bought the anti-submarine frigate
HMCS Stormont for scrap value and converted her into
the spectacular superyacht Christina. The yacht’s interior
décor reflected the golden age of Hollywood, with formal
bedrooms and highly stylised living areas. The original
features of this 99.15 metre classic are well preserved, such
as the Onassis Suite, the concert room and the infamous
Ari’s Bar – photographed here in 1954 for Life magazine.
Aixed to the bar – made of a massive piece of timber from
a sunken Spanish galleon – are scrimshawed whales’ teeth,
there to hold handbags, or perhaps to steady guests who had
been partaking in the bar’s oferings. The updated cabins,
named after Greek islands, are decorated in a pastel colour
scheme, originally selected by Jackie O.
The yacht, renamed Christina O in 1998, would host the
Hollywood and political elite: Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth
Taylor, Winston Churchill, Rudolf Nureyev and many more.
It’s easy to imagine Sinatra wise-cracking at that bar; harder
to imagine Churchill wedged into a powder pink cabin.
But then this is a boat whose dazzling glamour took even the
rich and powerful down a peg or two. As Richard Burton put
it: “I don’t think there is a man or woman on earth who would
not be seduced by the pure narcissism shamelessly flaunted
on this boat.”
For more design inspiration, seeBoat International’s new
book,Superyacht Interiors,available via boatint.com/estorePHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES
Photography – Dmitri Kessel