Studio Vafiadis

Who founded Studio Vafiadis and what is Stefano Vafiadis's background

Giorgio Vafiadis started the studio in 1980 and delivered his first superyacht, the 46 metre Gran Mudder, in 1983, a large vessel for its era and, according to the Italian yacht register Nautipedia, a genuine success for what was then a new practice. From that launch Giorgio built a design relationship with the Greek yard Golden Yachts that ran for decades, eventually reaching eleven joint projects by 2018 according to Boat International's coverage of the 85 metre O'Ptasia. The studio's early identity was set around residential comfort translated to water, wood tones, controlled lighting and a preference for calm, uncluttered interiors over ornament, themes Giorgio described directly to Boat International as wanting spaces with a logical flow and warm colours rather than clutter.

Stefano Vafiadis joined his father's practice in 2013, the same year Boat International named him Young Designer of the Year, an award he later told the magazine gave him wings because it made him recognisable to key people in the industry. He is a graduate in architecture with a master's degree from Rome's RomaTre school, and by his own account treats yacht design as architecture first, prioritising general arrangement and spatial planning over surface styling. Interviewed by Boat International and by the Greek outlet Beyond the Sea, he has described his process as a non-linear exchange between hand sketching and computer modelling, and argues that the only thing worse than an ugly boat is a banal one. Today he leads the studio's creative work while it keeps its original Rome base.

What Studio Vafiadis actually designs, and whether it is exclusive to Baglietto

Inside Baglietto, the studio's defining relationship is with the DOM line, which began in 2017 when the yard's now chief executive asked Vafiadis for what Boat International's interview describes as a floating villa, a 35 metre yacht built around stability, comfort and space. Vafiadis has authored the exterior and interior of every DOM model since, from the entry level DOM115 through the DOM133 to the 2026 DOM155 flagship. Baglietto's other current series, the T-line of T52 and T60 displacement yachts, is a separate design lineage pencilled throughout by Francesco Paszkowski Design, a Baglietto collaborator of over twenty years by the yard's own account. Studio Vafiadis's presence on the T-line is narrower and hull specific, limited to interior commissions such as the fourth T52, Daybreak, rather than authorship of the series itself.

Outside Baglietto, Studio Vafiadis has run a parallel, arguably longer relationship with the Greek yard Golden Yachts, reaching eleven joint projects by 2018 and including the 85 metre O'Ptasia and the later 95 metre O'Pari and 57 metre O'Mathilde. It has also produced the 37 metre DOM123 for the Italian yard Cerri Cantieri Navali, part of that yard's Firma line of 27 to 37 metre semi-custom yachts built with outside designers, and the 52 metre Florentia for Rossinavi in 2020. Directory listings on itBoat and Boat International also credit the studio with earlier work for Mondomarine and CBI-Navi. The studio therefore functions as an external design house retained by several yards for specific lines, not as an in-house department of any one of them.

Studio Vafiadis built its name on one idea, that a yacht can be laid out and lit like a Roman villa, and then sold that idea to the same yard nine times over.

Which yachts Studio Vafiadis has actually delivered

On the DOM133, Baglietto sold four hulls within a few weeks of launch in 2021 according to the yard's own commercial director Fabio Ermetto, and by 2025 the line had produced roughly ten sold hulls, some delivered and some still building, making it one of the best selling ranges in Baglietto's modern history by the yard's own account. The smaller DOM115, a 35 metre steel and aluminium yacht with twin MAN engines, first sold in September 2023 and had reached five sales by February 2026 according to the Italian trade outlet Pressmare, with two more ordered during 2025 alone. The DOM155, unveiled as the line's 47 metre flagship, sold its first hull in June 2026 for delivery in early 2029, again with Vafiadis credited for the exterior, though Baglietto assigned the first hull's interior to a different designer, Leonardo Santi, rather than to Vafiadis's own interior proposal.

Beyond the DOM line, the studio's interior work appears on Daybreak, the 52 metre fourth hull of Baglietto's T52 series, delivered in October 2024 with an Art Deco inspired interior in teak, Calacata marble and onyx built around a client brief that reportedly started, in Vafiadis's own account to Boat International, from the design of a single side table. At Golden Yachts, the 85 metre O'Ptasia was delivered in 2018 after a 28 month build, followed by the 95 metre O'Pari in 2020 and the 57 metre O'Mathilde in 2018. The Cerri Cantieri Navali DOM123, a 37 metre aluminium yacht named using the same Domus concept as the Baglietto range, was delivered in 2020, and Rossinavi's 52 metre Florentia followed the same year.

What it costs to commission Studio Vafiadis and how a project works

Neither Baglietto nor Studio Vafiadis publishes a fee schedule, and no figure specific to a Vafiadis commission appears in any of the trade press consulted. General industry guidance, including cost breakdowns published by naval design marketplaces such as Cad Crowd, puts full design scope, exterior styling, interior architecture and coordination with naval architecture, at roughly 15 to 25 percent of total build cost for a custom project, rising toward 30 percent for the most bespoke work. For a buyer entering a semi-custom Baglietto series such as the DOM115 or DOM133, Vafiadis's exterior and interior design is effectively bundled into the yard's build price rather than commissioned separately.

The DOM155 flagship shows how flexible that bundling can be in practice: Vafiadis is credited with the exterior across the whole DOM line and proposed an interior in his own warm toned, organic idiom, yet the yard assigned the first sold hull's actual interior to another Italian designer, Leonardo Santi, at the owner's evident preference. That mirrors how Daybreak's interior, credited fully to Studio Vafiadis, sits on a T52 hull whose exterior belongs to Francesco Paszkowski Design throughout the series. In practice this means a Baglietto buyer can retain Vafiadis for exterior only, interior only, or both, according to what the specific hull and owner want, rather than buying a fixed single-designer package.

What makes Studio Vafiadis's house style distinctive

Across the DOM115, DOM133 and DOM155, Baglietto and Vafiadis have described the line consistently as taking its name from the Latin domus, or home, and it shows in recurring devices: two level beach clubs with lifting bottom infinity pools, panoramic saloon windows that convert into open terraces, and shallow draft hulls suited to island cruising. Vafiadis has described his own exterior language for the DOM155 as clean and sculptural, never excessive yet balanced and aggressive at the same time, drawing longitudinal cuts and taut volumes from automotive design. His interiors, seen fully in Daybreak and in the Golden Yachts fleet, lean on dark varnished wood, onyx and marble accents and deliberately uncluttered surfaces, a palette he has said he prefers over lighter finishes, requiring compromise with clients such as Golden Yachts founder Paris Dragnis who favours brighter tones.

That house style sits differently to Baglietto's other current design partner. Francesco Paszkowski Design, which has worked with the yard for over two decades, owns the T-line's exterior identity outright across the T52 and T60, giving Baglietto two distinct visual families under one badge rather than one studio's stamp across the whole range. Where Paszkowski's T-line reads as a continuous flowing profile associated with classic displacement motor yachts, Vafiadis's DOM line is boxier and more architectural, closer in spirit to the villa references Vafiadis himself invokes than to a sports cruiser silhouette. The result is a studio known less for a single recognisable hull shape across many yards, in the way independent giants such as Nuvolari Lenard or Espen Oeino are, and more for one clearly branded product line at one yard.

What are the real limits of Studio Vafiadis's position

The clearest limitation is concentration. Almost every delivered project traced in trade coverage sits with either Baglietto or Golden Yachts, two yards the studio has worked with for years rather than a broad rotating client base of independent owners commissioning one-off designs. That is a real difference from design houses that build reputation across a dozen yards and hull types; Studio Vafiadis's brand recognition is effectively downstream of how well the DOM line and the Golden Yachts fleet sell, rather than standing fully on its own. Even inside Baglietto, the studio does not carry the whole yard's design identity: the T-line, which includes the flagship 60 metre T60 and has sold nine T52 hulls in three years, is pencilled throughout by Francesco Paszkowski Design, and Vafiadis appears there only on individual interior commissions such as Daybreak.

The DOM155 case adds a second, more specific limitation: Vafiadis's own interior proposal for the flagship, built around warm tones and organic shapes, was not what the first buyer chose. Baglietto instead assigned that hull's interior to designer Leonardo Santi, which shows that even on a line Vafiadis authored from the exterior in, interior authorship can be reassigned hull by hull at an owner's request. The studio is also less transparent about its own scale than larger competitors; no team headcount, structure or ownership detail beyond the father and son partnership is published on its own site or in the directories consulted, which makes it harder for a prospective client to judge bench depth on a large, multi-year commission compared with design houses that publish studio size and project teams openly.

What Studio Vafiadis is working on now

The DOM155, unveiled in 2026 as Baglietto's new flagship under 500 gross tons, sold its first hull that June for delivery in early 2029, built in aluminium for reduced draft and extensive customisation, and was presented by Baglietto as the next evolution of the domus at sea concept Vafiadis established with the smaller DOM models. At the entry point of the range, the DOM115 continued to sell steadily through 2025 and into 2026, reaching a fifth sale in February 2026 according to Pressmare, with two of those five hulls ordered during 2025 alone, evidence that the smallest DOM model is still finding fresh buyers rather than trailing off after its 2023 launch.

Both DOM115 and DOM133 were on Baglietto's stand at the 2025 Monaco Yacht Show alongside the T52 Daybreak, giving Vafiadis's work visible presence across two different Baglietto product families at once, exterior and interior on the DOM boats, interior only on the T52. With Baglietto describing fourteen yachts under construction across its ranges in recent reporting, and the DOM155 pushing the line up toward the size bracket the T-line already occupies, the practical direction for Studio Vafiadis over the next several years looks like consolidating the DOM line's identity at larger sizes rather than opening large numbers of new relationships with other yards.

Für wen: An owner who wants a yard-built, engineering-proven hull dressed in a warm, villa-like interior language, rather than a fully bespoke one-off from a large independent design house.