Ritz-Carlton’s long-awaited Evrima: Understated, yachtlike elegance: Travel Weekly

Every high-end luxury cruise line aspires to timeless design — and the latest brand to enter the segment is no exception.

But when Ritz-Carlton is part of your name, that aspiration can be tricky. Does timeless mean classic in the traditional way that “Ritz-Carlton” once implied, with tufted leather chairs, heavy curtains and Greek columns?

That’s not the road taken by the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, which for its first ship, the Evrima, has opted for pared-down architecture with a mostly neutral color palette. It is modern timelessness, in the vein of the architect Mies van der Rohe, often credited with the phrase “less is more.”

Minimalism, however, can be a little too minimal for some, as one of Mies’ contemporaries summed up in his rejoinder “less is a bore.” So the Evrima also has a few fun, colorful features that add a dash of excitement and whimsy to the mix.

It doesn’t get much more whimsical than the chairs installed outside the ship’s Observation Lounge on Deck 10. Upholstered in white, they are mounted on metal pedestals bolted to the deck and look like the fighting chairs one might find on a charter fishing boat.

One deck below there is another outdoor deck with a shaded hot tub and a pair of oversize loungers with hinged lids that have the appearance of giant clams waiting to swallow a pair of unsuspecting sunbathers.

Another quirky…