Eli Russell Linnetz’s Last Live Show Was a Stadium Tour. Now He’s on the Runway.
“I feel like I’m just getting started, you know?” says the 32-year-old multihyphenate as he undertakes his most ambitious project yet.
“I gave him a stage name.”In a hidden corner of the Pitti Uomo menswear festival in Florence, Eli Russell Linnetz’s mother is reminiscing about her son. When she was pregnant, 32 years ago, she knew completely and undoubtedly, she explains, that the boy would be a star.
About 15 feet away, Linnetz is the charismatic center of a galaxy of models, stylists, photographers, and Californian cool kids fussing over a rosy brocade frock coat on a model with bleach blond dreads. Should they tie on a vintage obi? One assistant cinches it around the waist. No. Another pushes it up on the back, pleating it upwards almost into a bow. Not that either. Could we take a picture of the look? No, it’s not right yet. Trust me, you’re going to like it best when you see it on the runway, a friend assures me. When a different model finally wears the suit down Linnetz’s debut ERL runway two days later, he wears the jacket plainly, no bows or ribbons needed.
But don’t assume that Linnetz is suddenly a minimalist. The ERL brand, started nearly five years ago, is a project painstakingly devoted to identifying the extra whoosh that makes something special. That’s why the studio and show are populated with hundreds of items—racks of extra garments, vintage clothes, posters, knitted tinsel by Olivier Herring, Los Angeles Opera props like football helmets and resin apples, beads, fringe, scarves, shawls, stuff, stuff, stuff! All of this magpie accumulation an intense effort to beam this collection’s story—post-apocalyptic surfers descending on a beachfront Firenze in the year 2176–straight to the hearts of the audience. It’s the first time Linnetz has placed his collection in the real world, rather than the pages of a hermetically sealed, tightly controlled lookbook. The ERL dream unfolds in the waking hours, supported live by a team of dozens.Linnetz’s collection first became popular through gauzy, nostalgic lookbooks created in his Venice Beach, California studio. Then came the celebrities: The designer dressed Kid Cudi as a bride for the CFDA Awards in 2021, A$AP Rocky in a vintage quilt for the 2022 Met Gala, and celebrities like Justin Bieber and Jaden Smith for their daily lives. Dior Man, helmed by Kim Jones, chose ERL to collaborate for its Resort 2023 collection, and went as far as to hold their runway show on Linnetz’s home turf, by the Pacific.“It’s just incredibly stressful, having people watch the runway in real time,” Linnetz says of the traditional show format, a slight tension buzzing in the air.
So do you think there’ll be another fashion show in your future?“Hmm. Maybe. I don’t know. I’m pretty traumatized from this. You can say I’m traumatized.” He smirks.But it hasn’t even happened yet!“Yeah, I know…” he trails off, talking about how the photos of each look will appear on Vogue Runway, saying he’d prefer to shoot the lookbook himself.“For me, it’s always been a 360 process,” he says. “When I decided to work on clothing, it really was about the clothes, but it’s kind of an odd thing when you have this giant tool belt and you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m just gonna use this one part of it,” he continues.
He says this standing in a hoodie and cargo pants, just a couple hundred meters away from Leonardo’s library and Michelangelo’s David. It writes itself: Linnetz is a renaissance man for 2023. He has directed films for Ye and Lady Gaga. He was a child voice actor. He redesigned and renovated Dennis Hopper’s groovy brutalist home. He produced arena tours for pop stars. He photographs magazine covers. He loves to text and DM, and takes a breather from fittings to snap a photo of a recent issue of WWD with his collection on the cover, and post it. He wrote a story for this collection and he enlisted New York media’s provocateur-in-chief Gutes (of Dimes Square’s The Drunken Canal) to partner with him on a fake newspaper chronicling a post-climate apocalypse Florence that’s been taken over by surfer boys. “I met Eli through our mutual friend Elon Rutberg. When they approached me, they had such a genuine vision where storytelling was as important as fashion,” Gutes texts me. “It’s amazing to see the two coexist in equal ways.”Linnetz wants to creative direct your reality, and these shimmering, hallucinogenic tailored suits, worn “in reverse” with shirts stuffed with shoulder pads to look like blazers and blazers cut skinny and sleeveless like shirts, pants pooling around the ankles in a shimmer similar to the way the moon dances on the sea—well this is the spirit of optimistic abandon he wants to share. He wants you to feel it. To live in it.
On June 15, the show starts. “When You Wish Upon a Star” plays briefly, followed by a trippy rendition of “Boys of Summer,” followed by a model dressed as a silver Statue of Liberty, and dozens of other twinkling boys in every “non-color” sparkle. Each look made in Italy. Each look worn with chunked up skate shoes with crystal laces. Linnetz bounds out for his bow and is swept into the wave of well wishers. Half an hour later he’s palling around on the floor of the show space with friends. Snacking on pizza. Taking photos. Capturing every moment of this moment. His moment.“I feel like I’m just getting started, you know?”
