ERL (Q7407)
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ERL is a fashion house from BOF.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | ERL |
ERL is a fashion house from BOF. |
Statements
As his 1970s-set movie project moves into pre-production—casting around 70 unknowns is one upcoming task—Eli Russell Linnetz did not allow himself to be distracted from the production of his fashion narrative. As the designer outlined it, this ERL pre-spring collection was storyboarded just so: “This story takes place in 1983 on the Sunset Strip. It’s about a bunch of vampires that live in Hollywood in the ’80s. You know, all my collections are always so bright and colorful. But for this one, I wanted to show a different side of LA: like, I’ve never even really made things in black before. So basically, the whole collection is super intense and black.”Entitled Hollywood Forever, the collection is wearable scenography for the story of a young hopeful named Penny who busses from Pittsburgh to LA to chase her dreams but ends up sucked into a vampire demi-monde. Around the three videos he shot to follow her arc, Linnetz plotted pieces that signaled a Lost Boys meets Rebel Without A Cause take on grunge/rock flavored tropes of teenagerdom.Linnetz said his favorite pieces included a black tank with the letters from the Hollywood sign heat-pressed in wonky disarray: “I mean it’s so simple and obvious, but it’s also so perfect.” Wide-shouldered suits with wetsuit construction details and collars cut to pop (plus ties, shirting, and more) came printed with monochrome images of Marilyn Monroe as the Statue of Liberty, alongside Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean. Elvis and others were custom-painted by hand onto bikers whose sometimes checkered panels added rockabilly bite.Caps lettered withActororDirectorwill soon, Linnetz said, be modeled by some well-known proponents of those professions for a campaign he is plotting. Alpaca mohair sweaters faced with Punisher-esque skulls, “artisan” plaid shirting, crazy keychain belts, cuff necklaces, and other pieces of jewelry by Tom Binns also featured in a collection that Linnetz reported was all made in California. He concluded: “Obviously, I don’t go to therapy. It’s like me living and kind of recounting my childhood through these things and remembering bits of movies I love: and that’s kind of how I see the world.”
24 October 2024
A part of Eli Russell Linnetz’s work for ERL that has gone unnoticed, or perhaps simply underreported, is its singular brand of male-on-male gaze. Linnetz is an adept storyteller, that much is clear, but what’s made his work compelling editorially and from a style—oftentimes more than design—point of view is his understanding of men. What men want to look like, what they’re into, what they find sexy and alluring in themselves and in each other. ERL is both bro-ey and erotic at once, a space once deliciously occupied by the likes of Abercrombie & Fitch or Hollister give or take 20 years ago. Thisbroeroticismis integral to ERL’s appeal, regardless ofwhoyou’re into, and it’s something Linnetz doubled down on this season with the subtlety of a puka shell necklace.There is no denying how sex-charged the early ’00s, thenoughties, were. Many remember the years, more so than the clothes, fondly and with perhaps an overly varnished sense of nostalgia. What’s been noteworthy about this fascination, at least in menswear, has been the return of the metrosexual aesthetic. The over manicured, polished, pretty boy sensibility that came to define men—straight, gay, and everything in between—during that era is back. It’s on TikTok and on Instagram and on the runways and in this very lookbook. “This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, why is it that you walk outside and everyone is dressed in this exact outfit,” said Linnetz at a walkthrough, pointing out at a mannequin positioned sitting down, full manspread, wearing a double polo shirt layered over a long sleeve tee and cargo shorts.“I like going back to these benchmark things, even from a historical point of view,” he said, “Where did this outfit come from? I want to solidify the narrative of this look,” he continued, explaining that this season was about defining his take on Americana. He is part of a generation of innate media consumers. Movies, books, TV shows, have defined the way Millennials think of and understand culture. “All my knowledge is informed by the movies I watch,” said Linnetz.The collection was titled “The Beach,” in a nod to the 2000 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio as an all-American backpacker. Linnetz said that his narrative for the season was four boys, Tyler, Jason, Brad, and Chad, leaving water polo practice and stumbling upon a mysterious beach party.
Can you tell that he also grew up watchingAmerican PieandOur Lips Are Sealed(starring fellow Millennials and designers Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen), or that he is well-versed inGilmore GirlsandDawson’s Creek?
25 June 2024
The disastrous flaw in this ERL collection was starkly obvious: You never let the surfer drive you to the prom. I won’t give away the full plot of this season’s Eli Russell LinnetzDon’t Look Now–influenced look book meets storyboard, but suffice it to say that the dude was one hundred percent baked.Linnetz sets up his collections like Ralph Lauren sets up what he calls his “rigs,” but with palpable irony and humor. The general context for this one was a Venice Beach high school during the late 1990s, and the designer obviously had great fun relating his characters to costumes and then sublimating those into clothes. The care that goes into his storytelling is highly impressive, but just as gripping are the care and details written into the garments.Linnetz was extra stoked to be showing sherpa-lined cotton-jersey pieces—wave hoodies and a too-long straight-leg track pant—that were LA produced for the first time “because that’s our artisanship.” A carefully frayed California souvenir shirt and a washed-cotton combat chino with slyly referential ERL labeling were both close to ideal examples of their relative forms.A group of SoCal-punk pieces hand-fashioned by Linnetz were genius bits of fantasy. His adapted vintage items had almost palpably lived the life of some Black Flag–, Dead Kennedys–loving aesthetic misanthrope. Linnetz bought a hacked Birkin (I think) that had been given the same studded treatment as in the Hermès show, and it must have weighed around 25 pounds. The skater looks—ringer tees and gnarly marly knits—were more attuned to Mr. Bungle and early Faith No More. For an eternal adolescent who is always prone to recreational nostalgia, this outing clicked many personal boxes—but objectively it was also a highly evocative and effective combination of multiple creative skill sets in the pursuit of a banging collection. They just should never have let the surfer drive them to the prom.
21 January 2024
For a show so ostensibly about the future, this ERL IRL debut (last year’s Dior Men resortcameoapart) felt heavily inflected by the past. As he explained before, Eli Russell Linnetz designed this collection to express a narrative of his own invention that was tailor-made to fit at Pitti. So the Palazzo Corsini courtyard was supposed to be the residence of some future ambassador, and we were supposed to be in the year 2176. The fresh faced Linnetz-cast cadre of real-life surfers from his real-life Venice Beach neighborhood had, in that story, come here to catch the waves that break in Tuscany thanks to global warming. Tonight they had crashed the ambassador’s party, bringing souvenirs from their side of the swollen ocean, plus pieces they’d pilfered from closer to here.So far, so forward looking. But it rapidly became apparent that the Nostradamus conceit of setting this show 150 years ahead also allowed Linnetz to check his Venice-tinted rear view mirror, back to around 50 or 60 years ago: Dogtown days. The Uncle Sam-meets-Slash top hats and ’70s shaped tailored topcoats and shirts worn over starrily-spangled “wetsuits” created an impression in clothing that was only reinforced by thethwup-thwupof Huey rotors and Jim Morrison predicting “The End” on the soundtrack. Not to mention the draft counseling service offered in ERL’s handout 2176-dated newspaper. We were between times, and maybe beyond them.As Linnetz cheerfully concedes, his experience and instinct both lean towards costume as a form of messaging. Backstage, there was a marvelous quilt made of transparent plastic tape in partnership with the artist Oliver Herring, continuing ERL’s American quilt story, that somehow seemed not to manifest itself on the runway. A strong shouldered officer’s jacket in fishskin-silver lurex was wreathed with abstract embroidered and crystal set regalia. Fleetingly sinister was the character in a vaguely Punisher-skull silver sweater swinging a baseball bat.Accessories included hyper swollen reimaginings of the Etnies/Emerica/Globe style of early ’90s puffy skate shoes, plus some very Linnetz-specific rubber-framed eyewear that looked more like goggles than sunglasses. The Tom Binns-designed collage chains had enough bling to outshine almost any outfit save for those that they were worn with tonight.
There was an irony embedded in ERL’s first real-world collection being so hyper-unreal; beneath that lurked a point of view about American masculine identities, hang-ups, and brittle wearable projections of power. But as Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer” belted out on the sub-woofers and you watched those surfers stroll by, it was as fun to enjoy ERL’s surfaces as it was to attempt to fathom their depths.
15 June 2023
The ERL showroom at Dover Street Market’s 3537 space in Paris was buzzy with activity on Sunday afternoon. In Venice Beach, where Eli Russell Linnetz lives, the sun had not yet risen, but the designer was bright-eyed on a Zoom call, giving the impression that he doesn’t need sleep. Linnetz, who is 32, has built quite an enterprise, and he’s a hands-on guy, photographing the zines that accompany his collections himself. He belongs to a long line of narrative builders in fashion, though his clothes have a real-world appeal that other designers of this ilk don’t always achieve.His story this season at ERL follows a family that strikes it rich after traveling the Oregon trail, then falls into dysfunction and deterioration across the generations. The zine, which Linnetz titled Greed: The American Gold Rush, opens with “pioneer chic” dresses in drab checks and a red bandana print and ends with a Wall Street descendent living through the housing crisis of the 2020s in a football jersey with a homemade bomb strapped to his chest, planning his own demise.It’s a dystopian view of the American dream, reinforced by the use of imagery from the film Easy Rider—tagline: “A man went looking for America. And couldn’t find it anywhere.” But the collection isn’t as dark as the tale Linnetz tells with his photos. Though there are T-shirts printed with the words “Rent Me,” he wears his generation’s pessimism lightly. He’s too fascinated with the major and minor arcana of American life—from the stars and stripes of the flag on down to swap meet sourced vintage prints and the 1970s phenomenon that was iron-on T-shirts—to be truly negative in his outlook.A click through the images will tell you that this is actually Linnetz’s most upbeat collection yet, and not just because he devoted a chapter to the psychedelia of the 1970s, with flower children printed parkas and snowpants, and airbrushed T-shirts in cotton that feels likes it’s been loved and lived-in for years. He had fun with his Wall Street-wear too, collaging classic menswear plaids with surfboard illustrations by the legendary surfer Gerry Lopez on jackets and coats. The back of the coat is DIY’d with one of the 50-odd iron-ons in the lineup. Linnetz pointed to his experience collaborating with Kim Jones at Dior Men for his push into tailoring, and said there will be more of it in upcoming seasons.
The coat is a collectible in the making that future Eli Russell Linnetzes will sift for in the aftermath if America eventually does implode.
6 March 2023
Zooming in from Venice Beach early on Sunday morning, Eli Russell Linnetz exuded a preternatural calm. He was a world away from the noise and the gloom of Paris Fashion Week, and he was better for it. But if he operates at a remove from the industry, he’s done very well infiltrating it. His ERL label, which is produced by Dover Street Market, is now in 250 stores worldwide. Meanwhile, Kim Jones enlisted him for a Dior Men collaboration and he was one of the finalists for the 2022 LVMH Prize—not bad for a guy whose collections this website started tracking in January of last year.Linnetz is a storyteller, he went to film school and he said he’s working on his first feature-length movie. For his fashion collections he creates mini-narratives. This season’s stars an architect looking back on his youth. In the look book pictures, which Linnetz casts and shoots himself, there’s a dad and three boys—“mom’s left and it’s just the guys”—surfer and skater kids from the neighborhood, and a love interest. They wear a mix of SoCal essentials like tie-dye tees, peasant dresses, grungy flannels, and corduroy flares airbrushed at the hems with beach scenes. Then there are the ERL staples—waffle-weave long johns, star-dyed denim, striped mohair sweaters, tube socks.Linnetz has an eye for color and print. The comic strip pants and matching bedspread that open this slideshow will be as collectible as the vintage 1950s comic book he lifted them from. A collage print of surfers at sunset turns an otherwise basic slip dress into an object of interest. And the clash-up of neon camouflage puffers, shirts, and skate pants is hard to resist. None of this is “high fashion” as Paris thinks of it, rather it’s elevated, eye-catching versions of the kind of things people who are interested in high fashion wear everyday, meaning T-shirts, hoodies, jeans, etc.There’s a lot of potential for ERL and Linnetz, a creative who has his feet planted both in Hollywood and the fashion business. When he gets around to making that movie, he’ll naturally be designing its costumes too. If he can produce and sell those costumes through his relationship with DSM he’ll have cracked one of the trickiest nuts: capitalizing on the consumer interest that pop culture moments can generate in real time.
4 October 2022
At the LVMH Prize showroom, where he numbered among the 2022 semi-finalists, Eli Russell Linnetz wore a pale blue turtleneck printed with the word sun, straight-leg jeans, and thick skateboarding sneakers all of his own design. A friend in attendance wrote me later about how charming Linnetz is, but said that they didn’t really understand his collection. “It’s just skate clothes?” they texted, confused. Across Paris, outside Dover Street Market’s 35-37 showroom-cum-presentation space, crowds gathered at the entrance to discuss Linnetz’s new installation—a pile of tires aflame in front of a poster for his new Guess Jeans collection featuring a leather jacket and bare ass.Linnetz’s propensity to confound and inspire is what makes him an engaging designer to watch. He crafts entire worlds for even the simplest garments and images, attaching stories to even mundane items. Those on the outside, who haven’t spent time Zooming, texting, and calling Linnetz might not get the full picture, and sadly, maybe they don’t want to. The forthright, yet whimsical clothing he makes goes against mainstream understandings of jeans, tees, puffers, and prim plaid dresses. Basic garments are often stripped of their magic, divorced from beauty, and reduced to mere stuff.In championing “normal clothes,” Linnetz continues the great American design tradition of Calvin, Ralph, and Dapper Dan—making the ordinary extraordinary. (His closest contemporary peer is Telfar, who has turned sweats and Uggs into heroic items.) This season, Linnetz cooked up a bildungsroman narrative of a man in a full body cast, whose mind replays the joys of high school, war, and romance, and eventually fragments into mania during an office Christmas party.It could be an amazing black comedy, but it’s definitely a potent collection of ready-to-wear. Linnetz signatures, like worn-in denim, printed tees, and pastoral skirts were all here, alongside new pieces like a camouflage patchwork puffer, knits in ombré patterns, crisp little cardigans, and star jacquard denim in tonal blue and the colors of the American flag. A collaboration with Salomon’s snowboarding imprint brought kooky color-ways to the collection. Plaid flannel shirts were styled to evoke Victorian bustles, shirts were strewn with pins that riff on Vietnam War protest paraphernalia, and the quilt Linnetz upcycled for ASAP Rocky at the 2021 Met Gala was reinterpreted as bulky, blocky puffer jackets.
All together the collection contained many wantable, wearable things, each representing a thread of ERL’s story.One pin stood out: “How did a kid like me end up in a place like this?” Linnetz has been a showman since day one, a provocateur. His work has taken him on tour with Ye and Lady Gaga, put his photography on the covers of magazines, and spread his ideology to pop culture junkies the world over. Why would a kid like Eli, with so much potential, want to be in a place like the stuffy fashion world anyway? Maybe it’s the tension. A devilish grin swept across his face as he showed off a printed version of his lookbook, some images too provocative to be shown publicly. Fashion struggles with those who exist outside its finite understandings of what makes a collection worthy, but its powerbrokers would be wise to take stock of Linnetz’s dreamworld of designer basics. It has potential to turn on a new generation—and challenge the old guard to rethink what fashion can mean.
8 March 2022
At the LVMH Prize showroom, where he numbered among the 2022 semi-finalists, Eli Russell Linnetz wore a pale blue turtleneck printed with the word sun, straight-leg jeans, and thick skateboarding sneakers all of his own design. A friend in attendance wrote me later about how charming Linnetz is, but said that they didn’t really understand his collection. “It’s just skate clothes?” they texted, confused. Across Paris, outside Dover Street Market’s 35-37 showroom-cum-presentation space, crowds gathered at the entrance to discuss Linnetz’s new installation—a pile of tires aflame in front of a poster for his new Guess Jeans collection featuring a leather jacket and bare ass.Linnetz’s propensity to confound and inspire is what makes him an engaging designer to watch. He crafts entire worlds for even the simplest garments and images, attaching stories to even mundane items. Those on the outside, who haven’t spent time Zooming, texting, and calling Linnetz might not get the full picture, and sadly, maybe they don’t want to. The forthright, yet whimsical clothing he makes goes against mainstream understandings of jeans, tees, puffers, and prim plaid dresses. Basic garments are often stripped of their magic, divorced from beauty, and reduced to mere stuff.In championing “normal clothes,” Linnetz continues the great American design tradition of Calvin, Ralph, and Dapper Dan—making the ordinary extraordinary. (His closest contemporary peer is Telfar, who has turned sweats and Uggs into heroic items.) This season, Linnetz cooked up a bildungsroman narrative of a man in a full body cast, whose mind replays the joys of high school, war, and romance, and eventually fragments into mania during an office Christmas party.It could be an amazing black comedy, but it’s definitely a potent collection of ready-to-wear. Linnetz signatures, like worn-in denim, printed tees, and pastoral skirts were all here, alongside new pieces like a camouflage patchwork puffer, knits in ombré patterns, crisp little cardigans, and star jacquard denim in tonal blue and the colors of the American flag. A collaboration with Salomon’s snowboarding imprint brought kooky color-ways to the collection. Plaid flannel shirts were styled to evoke Victorian bustles, shirts were strewn with pins that riff on Vietnam War protest paraphernalia, and the quilt Linnetz upcycled for ASAP Rocky at the 2021 Met Gala was reinterpreted as bulky, blocky puffer jackets.
All together the collection contained many wantable, wearable things, each representing a thread of ERL’s story.One pin stood out: “How did a kid like me end up in a place like this?” Linnetz has been a showman since day one, a provocateur. His work has taken him on tour with Ye and Lady Gaga, put his photography on the covers of magazines, and spread his ideology to pop culture junkies the world over. Why would a kid like Eli, with so much potential, want to be in a place like the stuffy fashion world anyway? Maybe it’s the tension. A devilish grin swept across his face as he showed off a printed version of his lookbook, some images too provocative to be shown publicly. Fashion struggles with those who exist outside its finite understandings of what makes a collection worthy, but its powerbrokers would be wise to take stock of Linnetz’s dreamworld of designer basics. It has potential to turn on a new generation—and challenge the old guard to rethink what fashion can mean.
8 March 2022
Everybody wants some ERL. I’ve heard Eli Russell Linnetz’s name in more conversations this month than that of any other designer. Some people are fans, others are customers, still more speak of the young Cali designer with a pang of jealousy. He’s become the man of the moment because of his capacity to world build. ERL, now in its fourth full season with Dover Street Market Paris, is not just clothing—it’s everything. A way of being, of putting an ab-skimming tee with tatty, low-slung vaguely Hollister-ish jeans, sure, but also a method for re-assessing your life and your style. Theatricality, time, and obsession are important tenets of ERL-ism, emphasis on obsession—these are some maniacally pored over garments.On top of all that, Linnetz is the quintessential American salesman. The more you talk to him, the more you wish he was going door-to door-with a trunk full of stuff like Chuck Taylor did. Maybe he will one day...but for now he’s leaving the road tripping for his narratives.“Cross-dimensional hitchhiking, making the way to California” and “a romantic blowing in the wind journey across all parts of America” were two ways Linnetz described his spring 2022 mood. He’s taken his surfer boys and plopped them in a pickup truck, scanning through the hayfields and mountainsides of mid-America, with pit stops at prom and football matches along the way. The ERL dude’s got a new passenger too: Linnetz is launching womenswear, and it’s an equally manic trip through the codes of casual American style. Tiered do-si-do skirts in acid trip colors clash with girlish cotton tops and school picture day knitwear, dotted with embroidered flowers. Most of the collection is shared across the genders, giant shearling pieces and wide wale cords offering something humble, while radioactive tuxedos and Fogal tights printed with archival Rudi Gernreich patterns looking aggressively kitsch.Linnetz photographed the pieces himself, in his Venice Beach studio, on models that could double as My So Called Life stand-ins. Earnest-faced, obvious hunks and wallflowers who skew young, almost prepubescent; they look like characters from a pull-out poster in Tiger Beat. One downside of Linnetz’s almost too effective storytelling is that his clothing, captured so up close and intimate, can start to seem as fictional as the yarns he spins.
Could a real guy ever look as good in an orange V-front cable knit polo sweater? Could a real woman capture the kookiness of a half-blazer half, floral top? Linnetz’s many famous fans have in fact proven the realness of his past collections, Dua Lipa, Justin Bieber, and Kendall Jenner, among them. Maybe he’s tapping into the American Dream of a new generation: to become the character you say you are. Or maybe that’s been the dream all along.
27 July 2021
Everybody wants some ERL. I’ve heard Eli Russell Linnetz’s name in more conversations this month than that of any other designer. Some people are fans, others are customers, still more speak of the young California designer with a pang of jealousy. He’s become the man of the moment because of his capacity to world build. ERL, now in its fourth full season with Dover Street Market Paris, is not just clothing—it’s everything. A way of being, of putting an ab-skimming tee with tatty, low-slung vaguely Hollister-ish jeans, sure, but also a method for reassessing your life and your style. Theatricality, time, and obsession are important tenets of ERL-ism, with an emphasis on obsession—these are some maniacally pored-over garments.On top of all that, Linnetz is the quintessential American salesman. The more you talk to him, the more you wish he was going door-to-door with a trunk full of stuff like Chuck Taylor did. Maybe he will one day...but for now he’s leaving the road-tripping for his narratives.“Cross-dimensional hitchhiking, making the way to California” and “a romantic blowing in the wind journey across all parts of America” were two ways Linnetz described his spring 2022 mood. He’s taken his surfer boys and plopped them in a pickup truck, scanning through the hayfields and mountainsides of mid-America, with pit stops at prom and football matches along the way. The ERL dude’s got a new passenger too: Linnetz is launching womenswear, and it’s an equally manic trip through the codes of casual American style. Tiered do-si-do skirts in acid-trip colors clash with girlish cotton tops and school-picture day knitwear, dotted with embroidered flowers. Most of the collection is shared across the genders, giant shearling pieces and wide-wale cords offering something humble, while radioactive tuxedos and Fogal tights printed with archival Rudi Gernreich patterns looking aggressively kitschy.Linnetz photographed the pieces himself, in his Venice Beach studio, on models that could double asMy So-Called Lifestand-ins. Earnest-faced, obvious hunks and wallflowers who skew young, almost prepubescent, they look like characters from a pull-out poster inTiger Beat.One downside of Linnetz’s almost too effective storytelling is that his clothing, captured so up close and intimate, can start to seem as fictional as the yarns he spins.
Could a real guy ever look as good in an orange V-front cable-knit polo sweater? Could a real woman capture the kookiness of a half-blazer, half-floral top? Linnetz’s many famous fans have, in fact, proven the realness of his past collections, Dua Lipa, Justin Bieber, and Kendall Jenner, among them. Maybe he’s tapping into the American Dream of a new generation: to become the character you say you are. Or maybe that’s been the dream all along.
27 July 2021