'How I helped Sir Richard Branson design the first Virgin cruise ship' - Telegraph.co.uk

Posted: 19 Feb 2020 07:55 AM PST

American-born Callie Tedder-Hares, 42, began her career designing fish tanks for department stores.

In 2015, after eight years as design manager at Virgin Atlantic, she set up her one-woman agency, Volume Creative, in Horsham, West Sussex. Shortly afterwards, she got a phone call asking her to help design Sir Richard Branson's new fleet of cruise ships. She assembled a team of 12 people who have been working full-time on the project ever since, in collaboration with designers such as Tom Dixon and Roman and Williams.

Just before Virgin Voyages debut ship, Scarlet Lady, is seen for the first time in the UK, on Friday in Dover, she tells us about the 'exciting, emotional' experience.

How did you become involved?

Five years ago I got a call from Dee Cooper [senior vice-president of design for Virgin Voyages] asking: "What are you up to?" I said: "Starting a company." She asked: "Could you move to Miami and help us with design because Branson's building a ship". I said I was about to buy a house, so the timing didn't work for me. She said: "All right, set up your company and we'll use you," and Virgin Voyages was my first client. My role was to provide creative direction for 50 per cent of the ship's public spaces – one person! It soon became 100 per cent. I took on people, there were four of us for about two years – four women working out of my kitchen, crazy hours – then we secured premises and the team grew. Now there are 12 of us, including an artist, an architect, project managers and interior designers. Aside from the public spaces, we've been involved in the interiors of the cabins and all the artworks.

How involved is Branson?

He's very involved with the whole design team. When it gets to a certain point, he says: "I want to see this, take me through it." He wants to create an amazing experience, a ship that everyone wants to go on and is different. His attitude is: "Let's do this!" Branson came up with the idea of having catamaran netting across an open space at the top of the ship so people could lie on it like a huge hammock, with the ocean far below. And he was the first one to try it out!

Callie Tedder-Hares Credit: Mark Cocksedge

What level of detail do you have a hand in?

Every single one. We've studied more than 8,000 drawings. Everything you see on every shelf, every book, we're doing that. We've looked at all the electrical plans to check, for example, that there are enough sockets for passengers. We sent members of my team on different cruises, to do as much research as we possibly could. Virgin also despatched lots of people to sea and they gave presentations on the ships they'd been on, it's always interesting. When you haven't been in the cruise industry you don't realise how big it is and how much it influences travel as a whole.

What design choices did you go through?

Dee, I and the rest of the design team went through hundreds of shades of grey for the hull – testing it in different lights, from the sunshine in Italy to the sunshine in the Caribbean because it appears differently. Same thing with the red on the funnel, it couldn't be the standard Virgin red, it has to work with the blue of the sea, so it had to be tweaked.

What did you think about the on-board tattoo parlour?

At first I wondered if anyone would want to get a tattoo when the ship's moving – that heart pattern might not look like a heart! Virgin's inhouse design team, who were then two people, had a list of ideas and that was one of them. We worked it through with them. Now it's one of my favourite spaces, it's beautiful. It's a leap of faith but it hasn't taken up much space and I admire the boldness of doing it and seeing if it works. That's what I like about the Virgin brand – their attitude is "let's give it a try!"

Tattoo parlour Credit: Virgin Voyages

What about the cabin bed that turns into a sofa during the day?

That came from Virgin; it was one of the first things they worked on. "What can we do with the cabin to make us different – to create a more social space?" The furniture was designed by Pearson Lloyd, one of the agencies in the Creative Collective brought together by Virgin Voyages. Instead of a bedroom it's a living room and you can get champagne delivered to your cabin. The room service is going to be amazing – you can have a little dinner party out on your balcony.

To try out the cabins, we built replicas in our warehouse in Crawley. My son, who's eight, and his friends want a sleepover in one of the suites so they can feel they've been on a cruise! Outside the windows is a massive printout of the sky and we have lights that make it look like you're at sea. Sometimes, after a long day at work, our design team sits out on the loungers with champagne.

Were there things that physically could not be done with the ship?

Yes, it's a big learning curve. Virgin had obviously never designed a ship before so the idea was let's see if we can break it then put it back together. There are constraints – for example, there's a certain percentage of wood you can use because of fire safety. You want the things you touch to feel natural. If we're using laminates, let's embrace them for what they are, don't try to make them something they're not. There are also weight restrictions for the ship's stability and fuel consumption. But you start to look at these things not as constraints but what make it beautiful as a ship.

It's an amazing, big steel structure, just awe-inspiring. Once I looked up at Scarlet Lady and cried. I can't believe it gives me that emotion. The engineering is stunning. I'm excited to see how well Virgin Voyages does as a new concept in the industry, particularly with no children on board. It's a pioneering move.

Cabin beds will turn into sofas during the day

Has it been fun to do?

Designing Scarlet Lady has been hugely exciting and great to work on. I can't wait till she's out at sea. I'll be sailing from the shipyard in Genoa to Dover. We're doing all the final touches on styling. It's bitter-sweet to see it finished – it's very emotional.

Will it be finished on time?

I have never done a project where you don't worry that it's going to be finished on time and it always is. All of a sudden there are hundreds of people working 24 hours a day. There are three times as many people on the ship this week as there were in December. What is a shell of a room one day is nearly finished the next. They are churning it out.

Any break before you start on Virgin's next ship, Valiant Lady?

It's continuous. Because Valiant Lady is almost identical it will be more of a consultancy role for us. I can relax a bit and take on some new exciting work, other partnerships in hospitality. We're like shipoholics now, we want to know what else is happening out there, who's trying to push boundaries and we want to collaborate with them. There's so much happening, with so many ships being built. I began my career designing fish tanks. Now the "tanks"' are much bigger – and the fish are on the outside!

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