Eli Russell Linnetz's ERL has won a major fashion prize, been celebrated at Pitti Uomo, won A$AP Rocky's favor, done Bergdorf's a first-ever favor, debuted a fragrance, and collaborated with companies as diametrically priced as Dior and Levi's.
And yet it took until 2024 for Linnetz to create an ERL website. Why?
Well, for one, it wasn't as simple as just buying a domain name, because nothing Linnetz does is "simple."
Everything bearing his name (or initials) is a labor of love, indicative of passion of the purest sort. Even ERL's website.
ERL's website "is a remedy to the inherent dissociation between designer and clothing made for other people," Linnetz tells Highsnobiety.
ERL's website is the closet thing to exploring the ERL world, which is currently shaped solely by Linnetz' whims. Or at least it's as close as you can get to skimming his closet.
Linnetz' label filters authentic clothing — $8,700 shearling hoodies, grunge-era shirts, cowichan-knit sweaters, board shorts — through a lens tinted sepia by school-photo nostalgia. Its creative lingo is whimsical but grounded, the blissed-out duds of a Californian stud born of white-capped daydream.
So for the launch of ERL's website, Linnetz turned around and devised a capsule that's especially personal, amplified by his first-ever in-line offering of sunglasses and footwear.
The web store-exclusive collection is a manifestation of "items close to my heart that I enjoy wearing every day," Linnetz says, and its name references its point of origin.
"'Made in California' is a return to my Venice roots," he explains, pointing out that the collection was made by artisans located within a day or two's drive from his home in Venice.
"I also enjoy the double meaning of 'Made in California' not merely representing products being made in state but also the people and ideas born here as well."
The ERL "Made in California" capsule, the first of several (many?), is both its highest-end and most grounded fare yet. And, of course, it's anchored by a semi-lucid story that "centers on a young surfer and his chance adventures of love, lust, escape" — tired of Venice Beach, he hitchhikes to a sheep farm in Big Sur where "he stirs the passion and desire, attention, and ire of the locals."
West Coast vibes, real or imagined, bleed through all of the ERL oeuvre. That air of Californian ease is everything, though Linnetz is quick to point out that though his "core DNA is related to California," he wants ERL to speak to an "international audience."
Look to his new accessories as distillations of that mentality.
"ERL footwear has deep roots in Venice Beach skate and surf lifestyle," he says of his massive, bulbous skate shoes. "The undulating waves of a sole clashing against enormous uppers in a way that recalls classic skate footwear is the sort of dissonance and eccentricity that defines the ERL customer."
Linnetz' sunglasses are also knowingly silly and huge. Like ERL's Californian-made clothes, they're all play and no work.
Except they're the result of painstaking creative labor and uncompromising material experimentation, yes, but they're also just a darn good time.
Welcome to ERL's world.
