MY OWN PRIVATE PANAMA
Plank by plank, designer Jesse Kamm built her off-the-grid dream house in the middle of the Caribbean.
Phone service is not exactly reliable in Carenero, the small island in an archipelago off the coast of Panama, where Jesse Kamm spends her summers. So when “Skype User” pops up on my caller ID, I can sort of guess who’s on the line. I’m accustomed to catching up with Kamm in asphalt-ridden Los Angeles, where she resides most of the year while her son, Julien, is in school, her husband, Luke Brower, is running a tutoring business, and she’s designing her eponymous ready-to-wear collection. But for the last few summers, she’s been darting away to Panama on her most ambitious project yet.
“Building a house is like making a dress—you draw out a pattern, cut the materials, and stitch them together,” she says. “You just use screws or nails instead of thread. I drew the maps, and Luke is really good at math, so he engineered it.” Is it really that simple? According to these guys, who only hired a few locals to hoist up the planks of native hardwood while Kamm and Brower banged the nails into place.
“You could have this house anywhere in the world—there’s nothing to plug into,” she says. The lights, fans, and laptop are powered by a solar unit; propane tanks fuel the stove and refrigerator. “We do have amenities like a blender and toaster, but we only use those when it’s sunny,” Kamm adds. Rainwater is collected in a 1,250-gallon tank, and is filtered for household use. “I’m acutely aware of our consumption,” she says. “If it’s dry season and we run out, we run out.”
Kamm and Brower stumbled upon this plot of land on a surfing trip, and they soon discovered that it was part of a farm that a family had owned for over 100 years. “Luke had an intuition that we should ask if the owner would consider selling. We didn’t have any money, but whatever.” In fact, the owner was interested, but the 33-acre plot was not exactly affordable. So Kamm and Brower hatched a plan: divide the land into 1.1-acre lots, and pool their resources with those of their family and friends. “It’ll be nice to have neighbors,” Kamm admits. “But for now, it’s just us.”
It’s worlds away from the pristine village in rural Illinois where Kamm grew up. “But our house here very much echoes my childhood, because my dad built our home in Highland,” she explains. “He didn’t do it because it was trendy—he did it to save money.” Her dad, an engineer and “a very talented ragtime guitar player,” still lives there with her mother, a potter. “We didn’t have a lot of money, but we spent a lot of time making art and listening to music. You can’t believe how charmed it was.”
After attending college in her home state, Kamm moved to Los Angeles and was soon signed by Next Models. “I was basically a working girl—commercials, print, runway. It was pretty brutal.” When she quit, four years later, she says she felt “sort of empty. I started drawing, and I started making clothes for myself. When I wore them out, people would say, ‘Can I buy that?’”
Kamm specializes in mix-and-matchable separates, geometric prints, and menswear-y blazers. Feminine but not girly, Jesse Kamm has become a staple for stores like TenOverSix in L.A. and Kick Pleat in Austin—and a favorite brand of girls like Kamm who aren’t afraid to get a bit dirty. “I ruined a few of my Geronimo dresses while building the house,” she admits. “But what else can you do? You have to embrace whatever comes your way.”