For a generation of settlers in North America's postwar suburbs, the Airstream trailer was the acme of wow. And today, the doodlebug-shaped aluminum home on wheels is still a supreme pop cultural symbol of the time when gas was cheap, the interstate highways were new, and the dreamiest family vacation imaginable was a road trip, with an Airstream in tow, to the Grand Canyon.
I felt transported back into those far-distant times one evening last week, when Toronto interior designer and publisher Kevin Fitzsimons pulled his sparkling Sovereign Airstream Land Yacht alongside a furniture showroom on King Street East.
The applause of the assembled multitude — artists, designers, creative entrepreneurs — was loud and warm, as it should have been: Mr. Fitzsimons' restoration and updating of the 9.5-metre trailer is as refined a residential overhaul as we are likely to see in a dwelling of any size.
The subtle interior palette of the Airstream is soft and welcoming, with white, tan and chrome touches, and with dark walnut veneer offering a basic visual background for the necessarily compact appliances. The technical gadgetry is beyond anything an Airstreaming couple of the 1950s could have imagined: Three flat-screen, high-definition television units are situated in various locations, and a top-of-the-line Dell computer enables the trailer to serve as a work station as well as sleeping quarters.
The electronic ensemble in this thoroughly wired structure is connected to the world at large by a roof-mounted satellite dish.
The appointments of the galley kitchen, similarly, are up to the minute.
The dishes are by Vera Wang for Wedgwood, the Japanese knives are by Kasumi, and the glassware is by Waterford. The Gaggenau kitchen appliances include a built-in espresso machine and a convection oven.
But the most beautiful thing in this fully-loaded trailer, to my mind, is the washroom. Taking up only 1.6 square metres of floor space, this elegantly composed little room was cast as a single unit from high-density plastic, then outfitted with a shower and a $3,500 Kohler hatbox toilet. It's a washroom engineered to complement and complete the high-flying interior Mr. Fitzsimons has created throughout the trailer.
The route that led to last week's debut on King Street began earlier this year in Etobicoke, where Mr. Fitzsimons found the 1978 Airstream and bought it for $2,500. The streamlined trailer had enjoyed a career in show business — it played a small role in the short-lived television series Wonderfalls — but was now a hollowed-out shell of its former self.
As Mr. Fitzsimons explained, redoing the Land Yacht serves two purposes. The first is to provide a centrepiece for an editorial package in his Toronto-based interior design and architecture magazine, Yoursource. This wrap-up will be a celebration of the Airstream as one of America's all-time popular icons, and a demonstration of how effectively this durable old art form can be transformed into a luxury dwelling for, let's say, Hollywood movie people on location. "It's the ultimate star wagon," Mr. Fitzsimons said. "I can totally see Sophia Loren in there."
It's nice to see an Airstream getting a deluxe cosmetic touchup. The famous streamlined metal body of the trailer was devised in the mid-1930s by the American aircraft designer Hawley Bowlus, and has been manufactured ever since (with one interruption during the Second World War) in numerous styles and sizes. Though Johnny Depp, Matthew McConaughey and Tim Burton own versions, the fit-out of most Airstreams has remained very middle-brow.
But Mr. Fitzsimons' luxurious makeover has always been intended to provide what all Airstreams provide: a temporary home away from home. After its brief Toronto showing, and an upcoming photo-shoot in New York, the Land Yacht will be hauled to New Jersey, where Mr. Fitzsimons is restoring and furnishing a 64-room mansion for fashion designer Marc Ecko. For three days a week over the remaining year, the Airstream will be the place Mr. Fitzsimons sleeps, eats and entertains.
It's little wonder, then, that he has made the trailer so comfortable. But that comfort has not come cheap. At the outset, Mr. Fitzsimons estimated the budget for the Airstream restoration would be around $15,000. So far, he told me, he has poured around $128,000 into the project — and that's not counting an estimated $110,000 in donated fixtures, appointments and services. (The Kohler toilet and the Gaggenau kitchen appliances, along with much else, were provided gratis by the manufacturer.) But darn the expense! For its designer, the Airstream is a dream home.
"It all started when I was a kid," Mr. Fitzsimons, a native of Mississauga, told me. "I thought Airstreams were the coolest-looking things. It is part of the inspiration for who I am today."
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