6 April 2026 |
Eli Russell Linnetz, founder of ERL
In some ways, Eli Russell Linnetz lives a quiet life, a small life. He wakes up at 7am and goes for a run in the bohemian-luxe enclave of Venice Beach, where he was born and raised. He gets coffee at Groundworks nearby before working all day at his airy, skylight-lit studio, which is attached to his home and once belonged to Dennis Hopper.
Sometimes he’ll go to Gold’s Gym and then take another jog with his dog, Einstein, at sunset. He’ll cook or get takeout and, by his own admission, rarely makes the trek to Los Angeles’s Eastside, the city’s de facto creative hub. “It’s like an ’80s Venice Beach day,” the designer and creative director says. “I’m kind of in my own bubble.”
But from that small life—that bubble—comes big things. Sprawling, vivid, strange things. Impactful ideas and dazzling images that you’ve no doubt seen, that have stayed with you, lingered in your brain. He worked extensively with Kanye West on the floating stage design for his Saint Pablo Tour and directed the provocative, chatter-inducing videos for his songs Famous and Fade. He designed the set for Lady Gaga’s Enigma residency in Vegas, has produced music for Teyana Taylor and Kid Cudi, and his photography has appeared in GQ, Interview, and Vogue.
But the purest form of his creative output is the clothing line ERL (his initials of course), an evocative, sensual collection that he launched in 2021. It’s here that Linnetz is not creating in the service of someone else, but entirely on his own. “I had been working for so many other people for so long, I didn’t even know what I wanted to say,” he says, his cherubic face topped with a mess of curls and covered with a scruffy beard. “I started going around to thrift stores, flea markets, assembling things that felt like people I had seen around Venice Beach.”
A look from the SS26 ERL collection, which explores the power and perversion of
preppy codes
The collection, which launched at Dover Street Market’s LA store on a gritty street in an industrial corner of downtown, was an instant hit. Vintage- looking flannels, thermals, sports jerseys, and hooded sweatshirts were offset by woolly coats, dusky sun- faded knits, psychedelic florals, and a yellow-and- orange puffer that looked as if it had been crafted from bolts of lightning.
“I never even knew how a factory worked,” he says of those early, freewheeling days. “I never knew anything about merchandising. I think that’s what led to these amazing things. I was just sketching, trying to capture the waves and sunsets of California and Venice. I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, a factory couldn’t do this.’ I was just sending sketches and asking them to make it. I was blinded by naivete in a good way.”
He pauses. “I didn’t realize any limitations existed.”
Growing up, Linnetz was crafty and inquisitive. His childhood was a swirl of activity: acting, sketching, directing. He had too much energy; he’d rearrange his bedroom daily. He recalls neighborhood friends running home crying when he tried to recreate a scene from period drama Memoirs of a Geisha as a child, which involved a playmate being lashed with a cane. His mother introduced him to movie musicals and his father loved thrift stores, waking early to rummage through the rails at flea markets. “From them I learned this perfect blend of making something from things you’ve found, but presenting them in a theatrical way.”
His life is filled with amazing tales, incredible happenstances that feel born of LA’s creative class, such as meeting the legendary playwright and director David Mamet through his synagogue, then going on to work for him; getting involved in the University of Southern California’s opera program, where he performed and learned to make costumes; his time as a child voice actor; connecting with West after the hip hop star put out an open call on Twitter for new talent and a friend just… emailed over his resumé.
ERL
Even designing came about almost by accident, he says. A friend connected him to Ronnie Cooke Newhouse, who works in luxury advertising and hired Linnetz to direct a strange Comme des Garçons fragrance advertisement. “What’s the line from Titanic when she’s like, ‘He saved me… in every way that a person can be saved,’ or whatever,” he says with a laugh. “She’s my fairy godmother—anything wonderful that’s happened in my life can be attributed to Ronnie.”
Cooke Newhouse recalls meeting Linnetz at Le Bristol in Paris, where he walked into the hotel with shaggy hair. “He might have been wearing shorts,” she says, when reached in London. “He just looked like Venice Beach.” Still, she had her reservations after hearing about the various projects he was working on. “This isn’t a popular thing to say, but everyone from California is always working on forty thousand different things.”
Still, a few months later, when she was creating the branding for a Comme des Garçons perfume called Andy Warhol’s You’re In, she got in touch with Linnetz. Together, they worked on a video to promote it, where a couple of dozen figures awash in yellow zentai suits walk and dance and kiss and hold hands, all set to a John Giorno poem. “He just thought so differently than everyone else,” she says. “He has an innocence and spirit and thinks so outside the box.”
Cooke Newhouse later introduced Linnetz to Adrian Joffe, Comme’s president and husband to its creative force, the enigmatic designer Rei Kawakubo.
“I just boldly said that I was doing photography for them and could I present some clothes?” Linnetz recalls. “And they said, ‘Sure’. It’s one of those things where, looking back, it seems insane that you would ask for something like that. The first season was very much like this weird, kismet, magical alchemy of just me collecting the things that existed around me,” he says of his foray into fashion.
His first collection was, in its way, a response to working with West and the loose-fitting, neutral- colored world of Yeezy in which he had been immersed. “I wanted to do something with patterns and color, even if it was ugly,” Linnetz says. “I remember saying that to myself: ‘Even if this is ugly, I just want to go down this path. I want to be expressive: I want colorful.’ I was tired of all the beige.”
ERL
Layered into the beach rat look of Venice was a wistful nostalgia that’s particularly evocative of the American high school experience. “I was listening to Taylor Swift’s new album today and someone here was like, ‘Does she have to mention high school in every album? She’s, like, 35 years old.’ I feel like that’s me, though, with Americana. It’s something I can’t escape. I’m living in a maze of my own creation.”
Perhaps part of that is because Linnetz has never really left the place where he grew up. His high school is a five-minute drive away and he passes it almost daily. “Movies like American Pie or this idea of archetypes—jocks and cheerleaders, and prom—I don’t think I’ll ever escape that. It’s American to me, and unique. I’m always exploring that in some way or another.”
Yet Linnetz’s visual vocabulary is much more expansive than exploring the psyches of American teenagers. His first big hits were his ‘wave’ hooded sweatshirts, two undulating pieces that came together in an almost yin-yang design, and his off-kilter puffer coats, made to resemble dreamy Valentine’s Day hearts or the moody sky at sunset. His clothing was immediately worn by celebrities like Justin Bieber and A$AP Rocky, who were attracted to his deft mix of the flashy and utilitarian. Linnetz had barely released his first collection when A$AP attended the Met Gala in a multicolored custom quilted cape from ERL, then he dressed Kid Cudi in a white bridal gown for the CFDA Awards; both outfits set social media ablaze.
He’s also received a warm embrace from the industry at large. The year after he launched, Linnetz was awarded the Karl Lagerfeld Prize at the LVMH Prize, and the next year then Dior menswear designer Kim Jones tapped him to collaborate with the historic French house on a California-inspired collection (shown on the Venice Beach boardwalk, no less). The next year, he was invited by the prestigious Italian men’s trade show Pitti Uomo to be its guest designer, a call that often goes to talent with many more years under their belt. He’s since collaborated with Levi’s, Guess, and Nike.
“I have to remind myself how lucky I am,” he says, “because sometimes people might get only one piece of clothing that they’re known for—or even dare to make anything that people can even recognize.”
Part of it, he thinks, is his self-imposed outsider status. He chooses to live outside NYC, the country’s de facto fashion capital, and, without training in fashion, he comes at it with a different approach. “I really do see everything as sculptures,” he says. “I’m never creating clothing.” Instead, he says, he’s tapping into that childhood love of directing, creating characters and telling stories, and the clothes are more akin to the costumes that helped shape the narratives.
ERL
His background of photographing album and magazine covers, helping with branding projects for Skims (amusingly, he took a series of photos for Kim K’s 2017 Christmas card) and creating 360-degree concert experiences for Ye and Gaga explain this expansive approach. ERL is all part of his boundary-less, all- encompassing project that gets larger and harder to define with each passing day. It’s also, of course, a bit of world-building that is the nature of a control freak. Even when styling and photographing his own look books, he opts for shooting inside, where he can exactingly manage the light, thereby eschewing LA’s infamously evocative golden glow. “There are too many factors when you shoot outside,” he said. “I like being able to paint the situation and subjects the way I want.”
I wonder how not studying fashion design has affected his approach. “I mean, it informs it by me not thinking about it at all,” he says after a pause. “I never think about it. I just make things I want to make. It’s not more complicated than that. And then I work on a piece until it feels authentic to me and feels like it belongs in the world.”
Lately, Linnetz has been leaning slightly toward more tailored looks, but done his way, in oversized silhouettes (“Oscar Isaac’s Huge-Ass Trousers Are a Sight to Behold” was a GQ headline about a look he made for the actor). And he’s been creating custom ensembles, like a webby, deconstructed dress for Cynthia Erivo (who also wore a swaggy, iridescent black silk taffeta suit from the ready-to-wear collection), or Jeff Goldblum in a tuxedo-inspired look crafted from nylon and topped with a sleek puffer.
“It’s rewarding, it fills me up seeing those moments,” he says of those designs, which often come from a personal relationship with the celebrity or stylist. “Those moments make it worth it for me,” he says, remembering meeting Erivo and finding her energy intense, but forging an instant connection (as a theatre lover, he was especially excited to meet her). “It feels real. It feels like an exchange of artists, and it was an honor that she wanted to wear that.”
Next up for Linnetz is a film project that he wrote and will direct. Details are scarce, but he’s pulling together a cast and hopes to film it this year. Speaking with Linnetz, with his calm energy and laid back California vibe, it can be hard to remember how big his world actually is, how large his ambitions are.
“I feel like all the things I lied about when I was younger came true,” he says. “I’d always tell people, ‘I’m doing this,’ or ‘I’m making a movie,’ or ‘I have a clothing line.’ I exaggerated the hell out of everything I was doing and now I’m literally living the lies I told, but in the best way possible.”
Talk to him long enough and you may find that Linnetz’s sweet facade hides a drive and focus that we’re just seeing the beginning of. “I’m always looking in the future,” he says. “I feel like people think I’m obsessed with nostalgia, but I’m actually more interested in innovation and futurism. I never like to think about where I am now. I’m always looking towards the future. I feel like I haven’t even done one percent of the things I want to do.”
Taken from 10 Men USA Issue 1 – CLASSIC, NOSTALGIA, CRAFT – out April 4th! Order your copy here.
nike.com
CALIFORNA DREAMIN’
Photographer ELI RUSSELL LINNETZ
Text MAX BERLINGER
Clothing throughout ERL SS26
