For stylish campers, the Airstream trailer is a silver bullet.
But San Francisco designer Christopher Deam had re-made the Airstream trailer with a mix of modern and classic pieces.
A Nelson ball clock and Paul Smith upholstery fabrics are among the designer touches.
This man who’s credited with rejuvenating the Airstream brand confesses that until he started retooling the classic aluminum trailer, he’d never been inside a camper.
“A lot of people are surprised to hear that,” Deam says. “But I’m a surfer, a cyclist, skier, and outdoors person. I’ve done a lot of tent camping. At this point, I’ve also stayed at the Four Seasons, and I think both of those experiences are equally important when you’re designing a trailer.”
Deam’s latest Airstream is a design-lover’s fantasy. He has teamed with retailer Design Within Reach to create a nearly $50,000 luxury trailer, complete with the illustrious ball clock, a Tom Dixon coat rack, Heller dinnerware, Matteo linens, and Paul Smith upholstery.
On the surface, the marriage of Deam’s Airstream and DWR’s inventory seems almost too easy. But Deam says that he was judicious in his use of classic pieces, primarily because he didn’t want this Airstream (the nearest dealership selling the DWR Airstream is in Watertown, Conn.) to become a mid-century time capsule. The only nod to classic mid-century design is the Nelson ball clock.
What Deam has done with his latest Airstream — and the five previous models that he designed — is to strip away many of the changes made since the trailer was introduced in 1936 by Wally Byam. The interior of the classic aluminum shell was hidden behind paneling and the all-aluminum and glass windows had been replaced with rubber and plastic. Deam went back into Airstream’s archives to find original parts and re-introduce the Airstream as an all-aluminum trailer.
“There was a lot of thought put into how to make the experience better,” he says. “The interiors never lived up to the promise of the exterior. A lot of the ideas and changes were intended to more closely connect someone with the experience of camping rather than to insulate them from it.
Exposing the aluminum skin on the interior really shows the quality of the hand-riveted shell. It also reflects the color of the environment you’re in. If you’re camping in the forest, the light reflected inside the aluminum is a green tone. And the light is completely different when you’re at the beach.”
People who travel in Airstreams are a notoriously dedicated — and fickle — cult. Bruce Littlefield, author of “Airstream Living,” says Deam’s changes to the camper have been embraced by fanatics such as himself.
“It feels bigger, brighter, and shinier on the inside,” says Littlefield. “He’s really stripped it back and added things like a glass cooktop and a computer workstation. It’s completely opened up Airstream to a younger audience.”
