The big news this season from Eli Russell Linnetz, of the brand ERL, was his launch of womenswear. The collection came together around a true (if far-fetched) story of a surprise trip he took to visit cousins on Martha’s Vineyard, only to discover they had moved away, leading to a very VC Andrews weekend with the WASPy family that had subsequently moved in that included a boozy mom, a promiscuous daughter, and a closeted son. Needless to say, strangeness ensued.
That’s an evocative little backstory which gave his usual Venice Beach antics an erotic charge, plus a funhouse mirror version of prep saturated with hyper color madras, chunky argyle sweaters tossed around the neck, and fraying, sun-bleached polo shirts galore. For his first foray into women’s, he extended his ongoing obsession with amorous teenage yearning to his female cast, with translucent little nighties, beach cover-ups, and filmy chiffon slip dresses in coquettish pink in vintage prints, patchwork, ombré dye or chintzy wallpaper florals.
Those pieces were worn over bikinis or, sometimes, nothing at all; one little slip, shown at Linnetz’s Paris presentation, was crocheted, more air than thread, and many were made from upcycled materials. Another was triple-layered floral chiffon so, when it moved, it had a blurry quality. “I love how free and liberating the fabrics are,” he said. “They’re all so light and just throw on. Nothing’s precious,” he said. “I mean, they’re precious in that they’re chiffon, but they’re so breezy.”
These were naughty, suggestive garments, but also immensely wearable (if very sexy)—easy, body-skimming shapes that one could easily see being embraced by young starlet types. “I’ve been tormenting myself on what our womenswear would look like for years,” Linnetz said from LA, where he was working on pre-production for a film he’s directing. “But at the end of the day, I like simplicity.” Still, their relative legibility and directness in shape were amped up with the almost neon palette, from rose to an almost Barbie pink: at times it was almost sickly with its garish girlishness.
The mother character had more composure and structure, with tailored elements, while the son had a classic New England wardrobe with his beat-up polo shirts, papery T-shirts with faded graphics (“Relax” read one), classic plaid shirting (now with a cropped fit), and hokey Hawaiian florals. As Linnetz tends to, he offereda few more exuberant pieces, like a little shrug covered in multicolor pom-poms, a nylon jacket with his signature wave print, bleach splattered cargo pants, a crocodile skin jacket, and plaid tailoring in vintage hues that was so bad—so tacky—it was actually… good?
The lookbook helped tell more of that story—all those furtive glances and angles of tanned, toned limbs. It’s a little bit Lolita, a little bit Saltburn. “In a funny way, I don’t really care about clothes,” he said. “For someone that doesn’t care about clothes, I spend probably 20 hours a day obsessing on sewing and details and things like that. But at the same time, I’m more interested in characters. What’s the storyline? Where did they come from?”
