ERL Men’s Spring 2024

Martino Carrera
·2 min read

Eli Russell Linnetz imagined that around 150 years from now the 16th-century Palazzo Corsini in Florence, where is first physical show was held Thursday night, will host a masquerade ball his Venice Beach crowd would sneak into, dressing up to make believe they are ambassadors and dignitaries of sorts.

In his futuristic imaginative trip, he also swooshed backward, folding key codes of American culture — think Uncle Sam, the Statue of Liberty, Guns n’ Roses — into his retro futuristic, dressed-up surfer’s look — anchored to variants on the same moonlight silver surface, courtesy of glitters, sequins, rhinestones and silky textiles.

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Distinctively ERL, the look was built on exaggeratedly oversize pants for the skateboarding generation, skin-tight leotards, bulky puffers and even a street-inflected take on tailoring with wide-leg bottoms, elongated jacket with squared, pointy or lifted shoulders, all courtesy of pads.

Each guy embodied a character, from the menacing punk boy wearing a skull-bearing fuzzy knit and swinging a baseball bat, to the dignitary in a sparkly silver suit with crystal-encrusted flashes that could have easily been borrowed from Liberace’s wardrobe in the mid-1970s and Boy Liberty, wrapped in a glittery cloth and holding a glass torch.

All real Venice Beach guys and part of Russell Linnetz’s crowd walking the runway for the first time, the models donned chunky skater shoes that were all the rage in the ’90s and Slash-style top hats. One held an apple-shaped flacon, ERL’s first fragrance.

All his theatrical flair and inventive prowess came to the fore, giving the audience a hint of his resumé, which reads filmmaker, screenwriter and costume designer.

“Super American,” is how the designer described the show backstage. It was full-on glitz and glam, too.

Launch Gallery: ERL Men’s Spring 2024

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