The first time a raceboat showed up with black sails, pushback was swift and severe.
“You’d think we had run over somebody’s kid,” said Ken Read, a sailmaker and an international sailor. “We backed off fast.”
But that was just a cheeky color experiment back in the day. Later, along came carbon-fiber threads, which were black, to be molded and baked, not sewn, into a single unit, a sail of ideal shape.
Then, black sails were in. The aerodynamics of carbon-fiber sails address the wind and do their job without stretching. They are light-years better than standard Dacron — good for smaller boats — or the Maxi owner’s alternative, aramid. Carbon-fiber sails are the lightest, strongest sails, period. For the intense world of high-end yacht racing, carbon was a game-changer and a must-have.
Architecture’s modernist principle that “form follows function” goes double for naval architecture. On a raceboat, everything must function, or it has to go. And even while the average new boat still comes white, with white sails, anyone demanding a few percentage points in performance — Maxi owners, for example — pay exponentially more than the minimum. Depending on the height of the mast, a mainsail at $150,000 could be a bargain.
Black sails are the striking feature of the Maxi fleet. At an event like the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, where money flows like champagne at Paris Fashion Week, the look is not new, but it is total. The event’s races run through Saturday on a mix of short courses and longer tours that weave through the spectacular Maddalena Archipelago.
Look at a Maxi fleet, and you could be forgiven if you wonder why the tops of the sails are chopped off.
They’re not. If the narrow point of a triangle was an efficient aerodynamic shape for generating forward momentum and lift, airplane wings would look like that. But technology was lacking to support alternatives until carbon fabrics and carbon stiffeners arrived as vital to building these larger, square-topped main sails that capture more wind in light air and spill it more efficiently when the trim is eased in a strengthening breeze.
And if form follows function, fashion isn’t far behind. “You can’t hide black sails,” Read said.
Aldo Parisotto, the owner of the 65-foot Alberto Simeone-designed sloop Oscar 3, is an architect in Italy. Speaking as a professional who deals in visual presentations — mood boards — he wrote in an email, in August: “Black has brought a revolution in aesthetics, generating the trend of an equally dark mood board for the entire vessel. Oscar 3 is a racer/cruiser with excellent performance, part of a generation with a dark aesthetic, which conveys a more aggressive look.”
It’s also a sign of the times. A spring 2025 edition of Vogue Business declared that “black is the new black.”
The aesthetic holds true with the Czech businessman Karel Komárek’s 100-foot Wally yacht, V.
Read will be V’s tactician and sailing master at Porto Cervo. “Black mast. Black rigging. Black uniforms. Maybe traditional white team kit makes a pretty contrast to a black boat, but white gets dirty in a hurry, especially on someone who’s working and sweating,” he said.
But someone who’s working and sweating would be cooler in white. Andrew McIrvine, the secretary general of the International Maxi Association, said, “It’s crazy having black boats and black uniforms on boats in an increasingly hot Mediterranean. But it looks sexy, and there are more and more of them.”
Case closed. Black and gray are in for boats and apparel in 2025, from Maxis to SailGP to the junior sailing program around the corner. Clothing has evolved with new technologies. Oyvind Vedvik, the vice president of sailing and R&D for the apparel manufacturer Helly Hansen, said two factors were driving the change.
“One is the speed of modern boats, requiring sailors to be actively engaged,” he said. “The ergonomic fit and even aerodynamic performance are important. The second factor is the fabric itself. Sailors want waterproof, breathable fabrics, and all of us want those qualities while we avoid forever chemicals like PFAS,” or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
In a world where hemlines are always going up or down, how far does this carry? Vedvik said that “a very light gray, a versatile alternative to white that absorbs less heat in the sun than black is gaining traction.”
And Parisotto, with his designer eye, spies “the beginnings of a counter trend. We have already seen some recently launched Maxi yachts that show a return to white, with dark sails, but they are a type of white that is not plain or traditional. This white is sophisticated, advanced and technical at the same time, with metallic tones.”
Read, whose company, North Sails, also sells apparel, wants to bring color back, for safety, first of all. A person overboard, whether it’s a pro sailor at sea or your neighbor’s 10-year-old bobbing beside a capsized dinghy, is easier to spot if they are wearing bright colors. Also, Read said, “If we want the sport to look its best, and look like fun, we need to bring color back.”
All those white spinnakers built of super-light fabrics billowing out in front of black carbon sails are no faster than bright, patterned spinnakers, Read said. And black sails wrapped in vinyl wouldn’t have to show black. They could show white, or colors, or the faces of your favorite rock band.
“Vinyl wrapping adds a tiny bit of weight,” he said, not enough to matter as much as a single mistake on the racecourse. “Vinyl lets you personalize. I raced around the world on a boat with sails that were red with a big, leaping puma, and we were competitive.”
What next? If you’re British, with social aspirations, you might want to be aware of McIrvine’s observation, following a conversation with the Princess of Wales at a regatta in July. “The princess royal hates black sails.”
The post Even Sails Have a Fashion. Black Is In. appeared first on New York Times.
