If summer seems like a distant memory in the heart of winter, the camping trend summons the sun. The desire to escape and simplicity, mixed with memories of a carefree era, is playing on popular camping codes and psychedelic references to the 70s, which are reinvesting design and interior architecture with nostalgia.
The rediscovered pleasures of camping, houses on wheels and vintage cotton tents, the makeshift shelters favoured during the hippie period, are seducing new designers such as Madeleine Oltra & Angelo de Taisne, the winning duo of the Grand Prix of the Design Parade Toulon. But also editors such as Very Simple Kitchen, Ethimo or Fermob who are initiating a retro rush to the outdoors by focusing on nomadic, functional and relaxed furniture inspired by the fresh air.
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Revival
Hippy
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Housing
Caravan
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Activity
Scouting movement
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Spirit
Nomadic
The outdoors and popular camping inspire
Transparent tent canvas, lightweight tubular frame bunks and seats, collapsible lunchboxes and other references to popular camping were featured in the Sardine Sardine installation by Madeleine Oltra & Angelo de Taisne, winners of the Toulon Design Parade Grand Prix. Inspired by Mediterranean camping, the scenography nostalgically transported us to the campsites of the South of France in the 60s and 70s, or to the vintage sets of Wes Anderson’s film The Royal Tenenbaums.
When these references pass through the hands of contemporary designers – Brinkworth, The Wilson Brother, Layer Design – the caravan is transformed into a futuristic capsule stored in the middle of a retail space, or into armchairs and bivouac screens reinvented by upcycling and reusing parachutes, boat sails, industrial tarpaulins?
INSTACRUSH
The psychedelic print revival
Prints in faded colours and ultra kitschy floral textiles that used to cover the entire interior of Canadian cars and caravans are becoming highly desirable again. Fringed parasols, bobs and parkas are adorned with psychedelic motifs. An aesthetic symptomatic of a need to return to more lightness.
Nomadism in & outdoor
As the boundaries between indoors and outdoors become blurred, the distinction between indoor and outdoor furniture is disappearing, leaving only the best: style and durability. Publishers such as Very Simple Kitchen are designing outdoor kitchens in kit form that decorate our gardens and can be assembled almost like a tent.
Aluminium frames, similar to retro camping equipment, become the basis for slouchy furniture such as the Sling chair by Studiopepe for Ethimo, which suggests the feeling of relaxing on holiday. Lighting fixtures become nomadic and adopt silhouettes borrowed from camp lanterns, remastered with a sleek design.
