The Mediterranean Yacht Party: How Private Boats Became Extensions of the Luxury Wardrobe

A yacht is a house that moves, and its guests dress for a setting that changes by the hour: a deck in the sun, a harbour at dusk, a dining saloon at night. In the Mediterranean of the 1950s and 1960s the private yacht became the most exclusive social space of all, and the clothes worn aboard developed rules of their own.

A frigate becomes a palace

The most famous of these boats began as a warship. HMCS Stormont was a River-class anti-submarine frigate built in Montreal and commissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy in November 1943; she was present at the Normandy landings. After the war she was sold, and in the early 1950s she was bought by the Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis, who had her converted at Kiel into a private yacht and named her Christina after his daughter. Sources differ on the date of purchase, but agree that the conversion cost a great deal of money and produced one of the most luxurious private vessels afloat.

Christina was designed for entertaining, with a mosaic swimming pool on deck and accommodation for a large party of guests. Among those who spent time aboard were Winston Churchill, Greta Garbo, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Rudolf Nureyev, J. Paul Getty and Maria Callas; in later years Jacqueline Kennedy, who married Onassis in 1968, was closely associated with the yacht. In April 1956 Christina hosted the reception after the wedding of Prince Rainier III of Monaco and Grace Kelly.

Dressing for the deck

The practical demands of a boat shaped the wardrobe from the deck up. Leather soles slip on wet teak; heels mark it. In 1935 the American sailor Paul Sperry, having slipped on deck, developed a rubber sole cut with fine grooves, inspired, according to the story, by the grip of his dog's paws on ice. The boat shoe he patented became the standard footwear of sailing, and in time of the yacht deck in general.

The striped jersey had an older naval history. The French Navy adopted the blue-and-white striped marinière as part of its sailors' uniform by a regulation of 1858; the stripes are said to have made men overboard easier to see. Gabrielle Chanel adapted it in 1917 for women, and by the mid-century the striped top had become the emblem of life by the sea, worn on yachts by guests who had never served on a ship.

From deck to saloon

A yacht party required two wardrobes in one day. By day, guests wore light, washable clothes, swimwear and flat shoes; in harbour or at dinner, many dressed as they would have in a villa or hotel. The boat imposed limits: little space for luggage, no long walk to a cloakroom, the motion of the sea. The successful yacht wardrobe was compact, uncreasable and able to move from one register to another with a change of shoes and jewellery.

Seen from the quay

Yachts were private, but they were also seen. In ports such as Monaco, Saint-Tropez and Capri, a large yacht moored at the quay could be seen by anyone on the waterfront, and its guests' arrivals and departures were open to photographers. The boat was thus both a retreat from public life and a stage for it.