AETHERstream 2.0: Redesigned & Back On The Road
In 2011 — two years before opening our first brick and mortar store — AETHER partnered with Paris-based designer Thierry Gaugain to create the ultimate shop on wheels in the form of a custom-converted, 34-foot Airstream PanAmerica. Dubbed the AETHERstream, the trailer featured a completely bespoke interior with custom shelving, hang bars, a suspended wood-burning stove, and various fixtures, accessories, and pieces of furniture sourced from the Paris flea market. This bespoke build served as a roving pop-up shop, crisscrossing the country and making stops in everything from major U.S. cities to small mountain towns.
The AETHERstream’s first stop in 2011 on Prince Street in NYC.
The 2021 tour brought the AETHERstream to Deer Valley, Utah.
After 13 years on the road, dozens of stops, and thousands of miles, the original AETHERstream trailer was rear-ended while returning back to AETHERhq from Monterey Car Week in August of 2024 — a collision resulting in insurance deeming the trailer a total loss. Rather than abandoning the idea of our mobile pop-up shop, we used the accident as an opportunity to return to the drawing board and build a new and improved AETHERstream from the ground up. So, in October of 2024, we got to work on a second-generation AETHERstream, kicking off a roughly year-long bespoke design and fabrication process that would ultimately see the AETHERstream 2.0 rise from the ashes of its predecessor.
The new project started life as a brand new 2025 Airstream Flying Cloud trailer. Rather than stripping a completed, finished Airstream down to a shell, we teamed up with the Airstream corporate office to have a custom shell created specially for the second-gen AETHERstream. Using a dual-axle setup, the 28-foot shell received four standard windows, plus a full panoramic window at the aft-end of the trailer, a window on the door, a pair of alpine windows, and two skylights — all of which were custom-placed specifically for this build.
Under construction at Firecracker Works
Working with Custom Mobile Interiors — a sub-division of Airstream — a custom side wall hatch on the trailer’s right-side was installed. Outfitted with an electronic motor and hydraulic arms, the roughly 12-foot-long hatch can be electronically raised or lowered at the touch of a button. On top of providing an enormous amount of natural light, the hatch also allows for markedly better interaction with the trailer’s surrounding environment and bolsters flow between the AETHERstream 2.0’s indoor and outdoor spaces.
ALAMESA Studio was brought onboard to work with AETHER and to design and develop the trailer’s interior. Borrowing design language and an overall theme from AETHER’s current brick and mortar retail stores, the new interior’s layout was experimented with over the course of several weeks, before being repeatedly tweaked — with the majority of the design process being done via 3D CAD modeling. Ample effort was also put into maximizing interior space and improving product visibility, allowing the trailer to more effectively showcase AETHER’s full product range, including dedicated locations for displaying our footwear and eyewear collections.
With the shell and exterior squared away, the team moved on to transforming the trailer’s interior into a bespoke mobile retail space. Constructed with a major focus on quality, durability, and weight efficiency, the interior was treated to a combination of oak veneer and hardwood that perfectly balances strength and lightness. Inside, the trailer also got custom stainless steel fixtures and hang bars reflecting the industrial, modern elements found in AETHER’s stores, along with LED lighting throughout to ensure clean, even illumination of all of the displays. Every component was also custom designed to complement the form of the Airstream while still maintaining AETHER’s signature aesthetic and staying true to its established brand identity.
To complement the oak veneer and hardwood, the trailer was bestowed with custom flooring made from reclaimed oak. Treated to be waterproof and heavily resistant to scratches and scuffs, the floor was also fitted with custom flush-sitting, embedded D-rings that act as tie-down points for securely transporting motorcycles, electric dirt bikes, or any of the myriad of “toys” that AETHER often travels with. Deployable awnings were also installed on both sides of the Airstream before the entire thing was adorned in a custom-branded vinyl wrap.
To execute the design, we called on Firecracker Works — a Los Angeles-based fabrication company known for its custom experiential builds — and worked hand-in-hand with the outfit to turn our CAD renderings into physical objects and bring the entire build to life. After a year of hard work and more-than-a-few late nights in the shop, the AETHERstream 2.0 was complete.
Co-founder Palmer West inspecting the final design.
On the heel’s of its competition, the 2.0 took to the road for its maiden voyage, traveling up California and making scheduled stops along the way for the remainder of 2025.
