There are yachts that impress, and then there are yachts that seduce. SHE, the newest creation from the Italian shipyard Sanlorenzo, belongs unmistakably to the latter category. Unveiled as the opening chapter of the yard’s new Heritage collection and launched ahead of her debut at the Cannes Yachting Festival, this 25.5-metre vessel is less a product of engineering than a work of quiet, considered romance, a vessel that looks back at the golden age of Italian boatbuilding while sailing, quite literally, on the technology of tomorrow.
To understand SHE is to understand the sensibility that shaped her. Her exterior lines were drawn by Bernardo Zuccon of Zuccon International Project, a designer who has resisted the temptation to stack volumes or build monumental superstructures, choosing instead a profile of remarkable formal clarity. The result is a hull that recalls the elegant navettas that once glided along the coasts of Portofino and Capri in the 1960s: low, sinuous, unhurried in its silhouette, yet entirely modern in its execution. It is a rare thing in contemporary yacht design, a boat that feels instantly familiar and completely new in the same glance.
Step inside and the sensation deepens. The interiors, entrusted to the celebrated Milanese architect Piero Lissoni and his studio Lissoni & Partners, unfold like a refined drawing room transplanted onto water. Mahogany surfaces sit alongside burnished metal detailing, while warm-toned fabrics and mid-century Italian furnishings lend the cabins an atmosphere of understated sophistication rather than ostentatious display. The full-beam owner’s cabin, together with the VIP and guest suites arranged on the lower deck, all en suite, speaks to a philosophy of comfort that never shouts. This is luxury as Milanese good taste would define it: tactile, warm, and entirely unforced.
– Massimo Perotti –
As Massimo Perotti, Sanlorenzo’s Executive Chairman, has observed, true luxury is not defined by trends but by its capacity to endure and remain relevant over time, and nowhere is that conviction more visible than in SHE’s engineering heart. Beneath her heritage-inspired skin lies Sanlorenzo’s first application of Volvo Penta’s innovative IPS30 PHEV hybrid propulsion system, pairing twin 1,000hp units with electric motors capable of powering the yacht in complete, emission-free silence. Owners can glide along the coastline at up to nine knots on electric power alone, or call upon the full hybrid system for a cruising speed of twenty knots when the moment demands it. It is a rare and rather elegant marriage: the soul of a vintage Riviera cruiser paired with the conscience of a twenty-first-century vessel.
Every detail beneath the waterline and above it seems to have been considered with the same unhurried care. A carbon-fibre tender, itself electrically powered and measuring just under four metres, completes the yacht’s ensemble without disturbing its purity of line. Guest accommodation for six, crewed by three, ensures SHE remains an intimate proposition, a yacht built not for spectacle but for the pleasure of those aboard her, and for the coastline she was so evidently designed to caress.
What makes SHE such a compelling addition to Sanlorenzo’s fleet is precisely this refusal to choose between nostalgia and progress. She does not merely imitate the yachts of a bygone Riviera summer; she reinterprets them, filtering their grace through contemporary materials, sustainable propulsion and a design language confident enough to whisper rather than declare. In an era when so much of yacht design competes on scale and spectacle, SHE offers something altogether rarer: restraint.
And perhaps that is the truest measure of her achievement. SHE does not ask to be noticed. She simply is noticed quietly, inevitably, the way genuine elegance always tends to be. In bringing together Zuccon’s disciplined exterior, Lissoni’s warm and literate interiors, and a hybrid heart that points firmly towards the future, Sanlorenzo has composed a small, perfect ode to the Italian art of living well upon the water, proof that the most forward-looking design is sometimes the one brave enough to look back.
Enjoy even more @ sanlorenzoyacht.com/she
Article edited by Mark Webber
