Aboard Orient Express Corinthian & Olympian

After reinventing travel by rail, Orient Express opens a new chapter at sea. With the Corinthian, followed by the Olympian, the brand expands the territory of its myth and brings to the water a certain idea of French luxury: the taste for movement, the precision of detail, the elegance of materials and that singular way of turning travel into an art.

Within this universe, conceived as a dialogue between heritage and invention, Roger Schall’s work finds its natural place. Schall Collection accompanies the project with a corpus of 135 silver gelatin prints, displayed aboard the two vessels. The selection is not limited to images of Normandie: it also brings together seaside photographs taken by Schall in the 1930s, around beaches, holiday resorts, silhouettes in the sun and a French elegance captured in moments of freedom.

These images are far more than decoration. They introduce into the spaces a historical depth, a silent presence, a sensitive link between the great narratives of travel and the eyes that helped shape them. Together, they compose an imagination in which the sea, the body, light and movement extend the same idea of the art de vivre.

This encounter finds its full meaning in an assumed lineage with one of the most iconic French liners, Normandie. In the 1930s, Schall photographed this floating palace as one of the most accomplished emblems of French modernity. He captured her monumentality, her interiors, her rituals, her silhouettes, but also that rare tension between technical prowess and refinement. Nearly a century later, this imagination finds a new echo aboard the Corinthian and the Olympian, whose interiors, designed by Maxime d’Angeac, draw on the memory of great journeys and the golden age of maritime elegance.

For Schall Collection, this collaboration marks an important milestone: placing the work within a living, exacting space, in direct resonance with its own history. After Normandie, Orient Express offers these images a new horizon — that of a heritage not only to be contemplated, but one that continues to embark.