Cannes opens today: ELKA aboard four yachts.
From September 8 to 13 the Cannes Yachting Festival puts more than 700 boats in the water. On four of them the faucets were developed with Elka: here is how they came about, project by project.
Cannes is the first place each year where projects stop being drawings. For twelve months a boat exists as a render, as a section, as a conversation between a yard and its suppliers; then, on September 8, it is in the water in the Vieux Port and anyone can climb aboard and touch it. It is the moment of truth for every choice made upstream, including the ones nobody will notice.
This year four of the boats on display carry solutions we developed together with the shipyards. They are four very different boats, and that is exactly why they are worth telling together: the same function — a faucet, a mixer, a detail you use ten times a day without thinking about it — received four completely different formal answers. None of those answers existed before the project that called for it.
ASTOR 68 · BELLINI YACHT — A COLLECTION BORN FROM THE DECK
The Astor 68 makes its world premiere at Cannes and is the newest step in the Bellini Yacht range. It begins from a precise idea of how time is spent on board: fluid, permeable spaces in constant dialogue with the outside. The beach area is more than 37 square meters and opens less than a meter above the water; the salon and the forward social areas stay more sheltered, without ever breaking the continuity between inside and out.
With the shipyard we developed a series dedicated to this boat and to no other. It is called Teak, and the name is not a generic nod to the nautical world: it is literally the starting point of the drawing. The texture of the surfaces echoes the rhythm of the deck planks and the depth of the groove that separates them, so that the everyday act of opening a faucet belongs to the same language as the deck you walk on.
It is the kind of work you can only do by entering the project early, while the materials on board are still an open decision and not a constraint to work around.
PARDO GT65 · CANTIERE DEL PARDO — THE BLACK THAT ASKS FOR NOTHING
The third model in the GT crossover range, the Pardo GT65 takes the yard's philosophy to its most mature expression. The reverse bow, a stylistic signature recognizable from a distance; the continuous glazing around the whole perimeter, made possible by a reduced number of mullions; the aft window that merges cockpit and interior into a single space. It is a decisive style, never decorative, built by subtraction.
In a project like this, every extra element is one element too many. That is why the choice fell on the Gōkana collection in matte black: surfaces that absorb light instead of reflecting it, clean lines, no glare to break the visual continuity of the rooms. Matte black asks for nothing — it gives everything back to the spaces, to the materials, to the light coming through the glass. It is the detail that disappears into the whole, and that is exactly the job it was given.
INVICTUS TT550 — THE RESTRAINED LIGHT OF CHAMPAGNE
Designed by Christian Grande and built by Cantieri Aschenez, the TT550 is the Invictus reading of Mediterranean luxury. The carbon fiber hardtop runs from the helm to the galley, creating shade without giving up open-air living; the fold-down side terraces turn the cockpit into a lounge suspended over the water.
For this boat the finish chosen is satin champagne PVD. It is a warm, restrained light, closer to the reflection of sun on water than to metal: it does not shine and does not impose its own character, but follows the boat's, settling into the pale materials and soft surfaces on board. On a boat built around Mediterranean light, it was the most coherent answer.
INVICTUS ST550 — A BLACK THAT BECOMES AN ACCENT
The ST550 is built for anyone who wants the most livable boat possible without giving anything up: an enclosed main deck with panoramic views, exterior layouts that reconfigure between shade and open sky, a level of customization that makes every hull a portrait of its owner. Inside, fine materials and a palette that alternates soft tones and decisive colors, in a continuous play of light and dark.
Into that play comes the satin Black Airline finish: a deep black, with a satin texture that softens its severity and turns it into an accent rather than a contrast. Distinctive but never loud — which is the exact definition of an elegant detail.
HOW A CUSTOM SOLUTION TAKES SHAPE
Four boats, four different languages: a collection drawn around the teak of a deck, a matte black that cancels itself out in the space, a champagne light, a satin black that becomes an accent. The difference between these solutions is not a catalog question: it is the consequence of four different conversations, started with four shipyards at four different moments in the project.
Working this way means coming in early, while the boat is still a set of reversible decisions, and accepting that the starting point is never the product but the environment it will live in. Sometimes the result is a finish developed to order; sometimes an entire series drawn for a single boat; sometimes, simply, a detail redrawn to fit a certain space. Since 2004 we have designed and manufactured marine faucets in San Maurizio d'Opaglio, and every time we start again from the drawing of whoever imagined the boat.
WHERE TO SEE THEM, IN CANNES
The Cannes Yachting Festival runs from September 8 to 13, 2026, across the Vieux Port, given over to motor yachts and marine innovation, and Port Canto, which gathers sail, brokerage and dayboats. All four boats are on display at the Vieux Port.
We will not have a stand at the show, and that is consistent with the way we work: a detail drawn for a specific environment is judged in that environment, not on a display unit. Step aboard and look at it where it belongs.
If you have a project underway — or one that has not started yet — write to us.
Are you planning your boat's refit?
Download the ELKA technical sheets from our download area or contact our technical team: together we will assess the least invasive solution for your project, from the standard range to made to measure.
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