News & Advice

Celebrity Edge Is the Designer Ship of Our Dreams

The cruise line pulled in major talent from around the world for their first ship in a new fleet of four.

These days, you’re as likely to find the Thomas Keller restaurants and Zaha Hadid interiors of a Four Seasons or Mandarin Oriental hundreds of nautical miles off-shore. The cruise industry has been busy forging hot-shot collaborations: In the past year, voyagers have had Nobu rolling the sushi, Tom Dixon designing their chairs, and Oprah herself gabbing with them before calling into the most glamorous ports.

Still, no ship has done it quite like Celebrity Edge, the first in a shiny new fleet of four from Celebrity Cruises, launched as a self-described game changer from Fort Lauderdale late last year. This ship has beamed a troupe of the world’s leading aesthetes aboard the next-level vessel. You won’t find the usual hallmarks of sailing the Caribbean—25-foot water slides, skydive simulators, a knockoff of whatever was hot on Broadway three years ago. What you will step into, though, is a top-flight dreamscape of the world’s most in-demand designers, including bars and concept spaces by Patricia Urquiola of Lake Como’s marvelously modern Il Sereno hotel; a straight-to-Instagram chandelier by effortlessly cool Paris studio Jouin Manku; bedrooms from Kelly Hoppen. And prides of discerning, follow-the-name millennials opting for a designer cabin over a week on Holbox. At least that’s the idea.

“Cruising was the ultimate form of travel decades ago,” says Hoppen, whose first at-sea project is the Edge. “But the industry has become fast food. I wanted to bring a grandeur back.” She did so by casting her trademark neutral palette over the serene spa, a chic Retreat lounge, and all the staterooms, including the six villas and penthouse suites. Early morning, her white cabins swim in gentle blues from the ocean beyond the double windows.

But the real jolt comes from elsewhere within the Edge’s 14 easy-to-navigate decks, where the designers’ philosophies blend together seamlessly. At The Club, an Art Deco–inspired late-night boîte with DJs and dancing, Urquiola went hard on sultry velvets and brass accents. Toward the rear of the ship, her typically breezy style has breathed life into Eden, a three-story bar and performance space (accessed, naturally, via a walk-through art installation) that feels like an enormous glass conservatory complete with blond-wood tables clustered in seating nooks and a “library of plants” that informs the cocktail list. The room’s show-stopper, though, is its floor-to-ceiling glass wall, an industry first—a giant screen from which to watch epic maritime storms sweep in, an electrifying live nature show.

In calmer weather, you can settle into another extraordinary spot, Tom Wright’s Magic Carpet. Wright, the architect of Dubai’s Burj al Arab, has designed cruising’s only cantilevered bar, which slides up and down the ship’s exterior in a flash of neon. Sipping a negroni while literally suspended over the water as the sky’s sherbety sunset swirl melts into the darkening ocean is one of the more singular travel experiences out there. Which, for Celebrity Edge, is precisely the point.