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If the job of a film director is to build a world on screen and draw you into it, there are few who do it quite so convincingly or lavishly as Baz Luhrmann. Every detail – from Leonardo di Caprio’s nineties haircut in Romeo + Juliet and the ominous light in the sky over a futuristic Miami, to the frantic sparkle of one of Gatsby’s parties or the blood red motif running through Moulin Rouge – helps to transport you somewhere new, encouraging you to spend the next two and a half hours fully inhabiting the world he has constructed.
This summer, in the bones of an original 1932 Belmond train carriage in central London, Luhrmann’s world can be experienced up close. Step inside Celia – a private dining room-cum-cocktail bar on rails designed by the Australian director for the British Pullman. There is even a story behind it; ‘Celia’ is Luhrmann’s fictional muse – a West End leading lady who was gifted the Pullman car after her ‘era-defining performance as Titania, Queen of the Fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Naturally.
Celia is the latest bespoke carriage commissioned by Belmond, the luxury travel company owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy. Luhrmann is not the first notable director to design a carriage: in 2021, Wes Anderson designed ‘Cygnus’ in his unmistakable aesthetic. Celia offers a suitably flamboyant and precise aesthetic. Catherine Martin, Baz's wife and an Oscar-winning costume and production designer, imagined the space, which features a lounge and bar, as well as a dining area for up to 12 guests serviced by a private chef. Thick velvet, floral motifs and a colour palette of rich greens, yellows, reds and purples are designed to make you feel as if you are in a 1930s West End theatre. British designers and suppliers have been called upon for the furnishings. Bill Cleyndert provided the furniture, A Dunn & Son the marquetry; on the tables there is to be Tom Dixon glassware, David Mellor cutlery and Duchess China.
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For Luhrmann, Celia’s purpose is to take you on ‘a magical mystery tour’. ‘Stepping inside the Belmond train carriage is like being transported into another world, and one in which guests are invited to become part of the story,’ he says. It is petite, designed for a small group to hire exclusively. And while you sip a cocktail in the lounge, the English countryside rolls by, creating, he says, a feeling ‘as though you've stepped inside A Midsummer Night's Dream’.
Martin sees it as a chance to ‘inhabit the nostalgia of another era’. ‘Onboard I imagine people eating, dancing and falling in love, taking photographs, celebrating life’s great moments and adventures – all within a world that offers a pause from the chaos of everyday life.’
Paintings by Japanese illustrator Yukiko Noritake offer a glimpse of what the carriage is to look like and they remind you immediately of Luhrmann’s Gatsby. In fact, if Gatsby were to throw a Midsummer Night’s Dream themed party, it would surely look something like this.
The car itself is to be entirely self contained, but it'll go wherever the train goes. The British Pullman departs from Victoria Station and takes daily excursions to cities like Oxford and Bath, historic houses like Blenheim Palace and Highclere Castle, and events like Goodwood and the Grand National. Belmond will unveil the car in the summer. Price for exclusive hire starts at £15,000.
