Jeep and North Face bring off-road and outdoor skills to special edition Avenger

The latest collaboration between a car company and a clothing brand sees Jeep teaming up with The North Face. The result is the Jeep Avenger 4xe The North Face Edition, a limited production model for the European market.

Collaborations between car companies and clothing brands have existed for decades. Often it’s just about the clothing, such as Porsche and Hugo Boss or Lamborghini and Versace. Polestar even teamed up with Balenciaga in 2020, although it was just for the gaming world and fortunately there were no rips or holes in any of the virtual Polestar models. Collaborations have also created special edition models with design and material elements from clothing brands, including the Fiat 500 by Gucci, Zegna’s work with Maserati, Peugeot’s connection to Quiksilver or Lacoste and one of the most famous connections, Mini and Paul Smith.

While the clothing brand might have its origins on the North Face of the Half Dome mountain in Yosemite National Park in the US, the inspiration for the Avenger version is the second highest peak in Europe: Mont Blanc. Just 4,806 models will be produced, the same number as the height of the famous Alpine mountain.

There are no mechanical changes to the mild-hybrid Avenger 4xe, but there are lots of interesting design features, some of which really define it as more than just a simple marketing collaboration. It’s a partnership that started two years ago, with head of Jeep Design for Europe, Daniele Calonaci, working closely with his counterpart, Darren Shooter, design director at The North Face.

“At the beginning we explored many different options, some more extreme and others more fashionable, but in the end we found a middle ground,” says Calonaci. “This is not an extreme vehicle, the idea was to embed the soul of North Face.”

Achieving that proved an interesting journey, especially for Shooter and his team who had not really worked with the automotive sector before. However, in Jeep they found a shared philosophy.

“When I took my design team down to Turin, we started talking about our brand history, our design philosophy and our core values and principles,” says Shooter. “Considering we come from two different sectors, our core values and principles are basically the same. This includes a concept of a shared love for the outdoors as well as a common value of empowering people; athletes and explorers to explore further.”

Translating all of this into visual elements included utilising the original colour of the clothing brand, Summit Gold. It’s a colour used for its tents that are so often seen in mountain climbing camp sites on famous peaks around the world. The golden colour is used for a decal on the bonnet, which sits alongside a large matte black decal that not only sports The North Face name but also helps to reduce glare. There’s another nod to heritage here too because the combination of the matte black and gold decals on the bonnet pay homage to the original North Face mountain jacket which debuted 40 years ago.

The main starting point though was the topography of Mont Blanc itself. Not only does it feature in the logos for the car, the contour lines have been used to create a pattern in the grille, the design of the trim inserts across the IP and in the Avenger badges on the sides of the vehicle.

“Jeep has used contour lines in design many times in the past, as has North Face,” says Colonaci. “We decided to find a common topic to project on the vehicle and Mont Blanc was perfect, as it sits between Switzerland and Italy, basically the conjunction of our two (European) companies.”

Getting the contours right required extensive experimentation during the first year of the project. Initially they looked at printing the contours on the IP but the surface proved too big. Instead they turned to using a laser to cut into the paint, something that gave them the result they wanted in terms of both definition and texture.

Colonaci also decided he wanted floor mats with a 3D effect that you can actually feel. Again, the mouldings for the mats follows the shape of the contours of Mont Blanc, although he admits that they haven’t quite got the precision of the moulding quite right yet. He’s confident it will be perfected in time for first deliveries in 2025.

The biggest area of collaboration was the seats. Here the design and CMF teams from both brands worked very closely to create something that is a real design feature.

“The seats have the famous puffer jacket style, with a breathable area behind your back,” says Colonaci. “The idea was to really give the sensation of the jacket around you. It’s part of giving the Avenger 4xe a lot of character with both a North Face soul and a Jeep soul in a vehicle that is super capable in its segment.”

Creating the transparent polyurethane for the seats required extensive testing in a Stellantis lab, but other parts of the seats have recognisable features that were more straightforward to create. The back of the seats feature criss-cross laces similar to those used by North Face on its backpacks. It all works rather well and combines cool style with practical design.

Whether this initial collaboration will lead to more in the future, Colonaci is not so sure, but as an avid off-roader and fan of the clothing brand, he certainly hopes so.

“I would like to see a more extreme vehicle, that would be a nice dream,” he says. “But the automotive industry is more severe. Maybe we will find a strong material coming from North Face that cannot work in automotive, then we will need more time. If we have another chance it would be nice to explore something.”

“We have spoken to North Face about it, but nothing is confirmed,” he adds. “Never say never though and if this vehicle is a success then maybe it will be the key to open new doors.”