Airstream Special Edition Travel Trailers are Amazing Collabs
The iconic RV maker teams up with other brands to go in search of design gold.
Image Caption: Photo Credit: Airstream
There is no mistaking an Airstream. When you see one coming down the road, you recognize the silver-bullet build long before the trailer comes into clear view. So distinct is the Airstream brand, after producing travel trailers for 95 years, that it occupies a singular place in the world of American travel.
Even so, the iconic brand is still willing to push itself to see what “Airstream” can mean, aesthetically. Sometimes, it recruits some help. Collaborative trailer designs have been part of Airstream’s production line for at least a quarter century. In the early 2000s, Airstream teamed up with brands like Quicksilver and Eddie Bauer, and over the past decade its partnerships have grown—including collaborations with Pendleton Woolen Mills (2016), Tommy Bahama (2017), Pottery Barn (2021) and Supreme (2022).
“Collaborations push us from a design standpoint,” says Mollie Hansen, Airstream’s chief marketing officer. “We have huge admiration for whoever we’re working with. You stretch and learn and do different things. It’s a labor of love.”
Photo Credit: Airstream
The two latest partnerships are among Airstream’s most ambitious. Last year, the company unveiled a “Usonian Edition,” designed in collaboration with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation as an homage to America’s most famous architect. It also released a Western-themed trailer created with Stetson and the Four Sixes Ranch, two Texas brands that draw on more than 150 years of heritage.
The exterior of these rigs maintain a vintage Airstream look, and at first glance you might think little has changed. But each trailer carries unique external design elements. For instance, rear hatches—a rarity on Airstreams—create indoor-outdoor lounges. The Stetson-Four Sixes model incorporates cowboy graphics on its screen door and front window guard, while the Frank Lloyd Wright model boasts 29 windows, the most ever in an Airstream.
The interior touches are less subtle. The Western trailer includes hammered-copper sinks, plush semi-aniline leather seats, a removable cowboy-hat rack and regional art throughout. The Usonian Edition features an earth-toned color palette with custom wood furniture, floating display shelves and convertible spaces like a retractable desk and a modular mattress arrangement—all nods to Wright’s refined design philosophies.
Photo Credit: Airstream
Collaborations take time. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation project required nearly three years to complete, a process that included touring Wright’s properties and working intimately with the foundation’s industrial designer and creative team on decisions about fabric, color scheme, natural light and the practicalities of RV living.
“That was a partnership we’d been talking about for years,” says Carey Walley, director of marketing at Airstream. “It was a perfect marriage when we actually pulled it together.”
Like any marriage, these partnerships begin with mutual interest. “Not every process looks exactly the same,” Walley says. “It’s a bit of a courtship between us and the other brands to get to the table where we’re actually designing things.” In the case of the Western trailer, the courtship began with a call from Stetson to Airstream, which was already working with the Four Sixes on a separate project. It made sense for all three to work together—a project that only took a few months to complete.
Photo Credit: Airstream/Andrew Pielage
Beyond pushing into new design frontiers, these projects have added benefits for Airstream, like introducing new audiences to their travel trailers and rethinking how their coveted rigs can serve an already-loyal customer. According to Hansen, Airstream surveys its consumers frequently, asking what they read, what brands they’re attracted to and what kind of partnerships they’d like to see next. “There’s a little bit of intuition when you’re picking out these partnerships,” she says. “But at the end of the day, we look for a partnership that makes sense for our customer.”
What that next partnership will be is yet to be determined—or, rather, yet to be announced—but Hansen says Airstream is always considering new collaborations. “There are so many fantastic opportunities,” she says. “Sometimes we can’t believe the opportunities that come to our brand.”
This article originally appeared in Wildsam magazine. For more Wildsam content, sign up for our newsletter.
