DAPPER DESIGNER
10/4/2007 5:01:54 PM by Lisa Knapp
Joey Lazzara is more than a yacht designer for Lazzara Yachts, he’s part of a new wave of design sophistication that has taken his family’s brand to the next level — and beyond.
Photo by Lisa Knapp
Birthdays that end in zeroes can play with the mind. But Joey Lazzara celebrated his 30th in style — in the Turks and Caicos with his wife, Allyson. “Turning 30 was hard for me,” says Lazzara. “It reminded me of what my grandfather always said, ‘The days you spend on the water don’t count against you.’ So I spent the vacation sailing and diving. I’m around the water all the time. I spent one year at SMU in Dallas and I missed being near the water so much that I transferred to the College of Charleston in South Carolina.”
Lazzara has salt in his blood and often sailed with his grandfather to Cat Cay as a child. He’s a third generation yacht designer, working at the family’s headquarters in Tampa, Florida. While he has a direct pipeline to the head honcho, working for his father, Dick Lazzara, is a double-edged sword. “I’m fortunate that I get to see my family every day. I really enjoy it. But more is expected of you, I think. You have to get in earlier, leave later and set an example for the other guys,” he says. His brothers, cousins and uncle also work at Lazzara, each choosing their own forte. Joey’s is interior design and exterior styling.
“The best advice I ever got was to balance your work with your family,” he says. As such, when he’s not working or traveling, he spends time with his wife and their daughter, Ava, while managing to squeeze in a few Bucs football games in the company’s sky box. Ava, who is nearing three, just started pre-school and is a bonafide daddy’s girl. “She loves to go to the Bucs’ games,” he says. “The stadium has a pirate ship in the end zone and the pirates blast cannons when the Bucs score. That’s her favorite part. After the last game, she woke up in the middle of the night and yelled, ‘Go Bucs!’ I travel to many boat shows during the football season so I bring her to every game possible.”
Lazzara is an observant person and just about any environment nourishes his creative juices. “You get inspiration from anywhere,” he says. “Anything that has to do with style, any magazine, not just boating magazines, can inspire you. I was at a home show and saw inspiration from an infinity shower.”
He gets design ideas from women’s shoes, too, and is strongly influenced by car design. “No one is more cutting-edge than car designers. They’re the best of the best,” he says. “If other yacht designers aren’t looking at car designs, they’re not doing their jobs.”
The 78-foot Lazzara LSX sports cruiser is the first project Joey Lazzara took from start to finish. “The details are everything on this boat and an incredible amount of forethought went into this,” he says. The split-level express boat is a hot trend. Lazarra has broken new ground with sports cruisers in a family business whose bread and butter was building motor yachts.
“Younger designers provide a clear mind and fresh way of designing versus what was designed in the past,” says Lazzara. “We’re not limited by boundaries of the way we used to do things. It’s a clean sheet of paper.”