Behind the sun-soaked Californian clothes of SS2022, Eli Russel Linnetz reminds us there are no rules when you live in your own fantasy.
What is real? What is fake? What is American? Eli Russel Linnetz enjoys asking these types of philosophical questions in each of the collections he has unveiled, since launching his brand, ERL, back in 2018. For his SS2022 collection, “An American Tale,” he’s back with clothes raided from the cool kid’s closet, styled like they’re meant to be taken off in the back of a 1977 Vista Cruiser after a long day driving down the Pacific Coast Highway.
Behold a jock with white wings and crutches like a sun kissed Icarus (complete with crotch cast from a tough landing), male midriff galore, and doe-eyed forest girls wearing ruby red ribbed-knit sweaters embroidered with California wildflowers. For this collection, Linnetz sings Julie Andrews “Favorite Things” with an American vocal fry. He’s also like fashion’s Wes Anderson, always summoning a cast of characters meticulously materialized in operatic acts taking place from summer’s freedom to prom in the spring. There’s a school picture day dress in purple, polka dots and patchwork and double decker do-si-do skirts. Silk satin suits in mis-matched lilac and orange make you question if that combination would even look good on a real person. But the trick is it doesn’t matter. Linnetz is selling a fantasy image made of so many everyday things you forget it’s all a mirage.
It’s difficult to think of ERL without wanting to listen to Joni Mitchell’s 1971 song “California” or read Joan Didion’s 1967 account of a child on LSD. References are littered throughout: Models carry books like The Freshman, a 1920s story about a college football player who’s really the joke of the team, conjured in a cropped red mesh jersey and a model’s wicked smile. “Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others,” says the Benjamin Franklin figurine hidden throughout the lookbook. It’s from these references that ERL’s kooky Californication of American basics get its life.
At ten, Eli voiced the role of Tipo in The Emperor's New Groove, studied opera in college, where he designed and performed, before going on to do set design for Kanye West’s “Famous” and “Fade” videos, was a cinematographer on 2015 TV series Wacko Smacko, and was introduced to the Comme des Garcons universe by Ronnie Cooke Newhouse.
His models have gotten younger looking as the ever-American obsession with youth and rejuvenation grips a country locked in doors. What does it mean when teenage faces are selling sex on Sunset Boulevard? These kids reflect essential questions about who the ERL buyer really wants to be: When anyone can create an identity around them by posting a few images, why not give youth a do-over by wearing a green striped sweater that says “virgin” across the front in orange?
ERL is worn by the arbiters of American taste (which is not to say they have taste themselves). It’s a brand frequented by artists like Kid Cudi, Lil Uzi Vert and worn virally by ASAP Rocky at the 2021 Met Gala to skate park super-fans obsessing over deals on GRAILED to Linnetz’s own father, Jeff. Coming across an ERL product in the wild always necessitates a double-take.
Adrian Joffe was so impressed by his work on a film for the “Andy Warhol’s You’re In” scent that he asked Linnetz to design a drop for the new Dover Street Market LA’s launch in 2018. It sold out immediately.
Now in his fourth season with DSM Paris, Linnetz is a skilled contrarian who enjoys issuing (and ignoring) decrees such as, “Everyone is so fucking boring. The bar is just so fucking low that like if a guy’s midriff is showing, they’re like ‘it’s sexy’. I don’t really apply sexuality or anything to the work.” For SS2022, he’s decided not to take his own advice once again.