For Designer Eli Russell Linnetz, The World's A Stage

With Milan Fashion Week drawing to a close, the S/S 24 menswear season has been more about wearable, and beautiful, clothes than runway spectacle - see Prada, Zegna, Neil Barrett and JW Anderson. And yet, amongst the younger brands, a fashion show offers an irresistible opportunity to go further than that.

Fashion shows have always been about combining different mediums; hair, models, clothes and music. But what about the art of set design? For his Pitti Uomo debut, Eli Russell Linnetz decided to sprinkle ERL breadcrumbs across the historic Italian city of Florence, to conjure up an imagined future where Venice beach surfers come to ride the waves of a sunken town. Bringing his experience in screenwriting, filmmaking, costume design and graphic design to the task at hand, the designer of the viral, fast-growing brand ERL spoke to SHOWstudio before the show to tell us more.

'For some reason, when I created ERL, I was just in such a bubble, and it was an escape from all the stuff I'd done before', Linnetz told SHOWstudio's editor Hetty Mahlich shortly before his debut inside the Palazzo Corsini. 'I was all about doing everything myself, taking the images in my studio by myself, casting people locally, doing the styling myself; it really was an art project. I didn't even think about selling the clothes. It wasn't about that'. Clothing and fashion is just one of Linnetz's tools; and his first runway show proved to be just one piece of the puzzle. Pitti Uomo guests at the menswear fair's central hub inside the Fortezza da Basso, came across a sunken Statue of Liberty, discovered by construction worker figurines placed atop scaffolding. The ending scene of Planet of the Apes (1968) instantly springs to mind. Rather than astronauts marooned on a planet taken over by apes, Linnetz's tale is rooted in Venice Beach.

'The whole collection follows a story of an American group of teenagers in the future', Linnetz explains. 'They're all surfers and the sea water has risen so Florence is underwater, but they're trying to catch the biggest waves which happen to be over a sunken Florence and while they're there, some military ambassador is having a masquerade ball so they play dress up and sneak in and pretend to be rich people at this party and then they get drunk and go upstairs and try on all these military outfits, and so it's this chaotic dress up make-believe world.' But how does the casting fit into this? 'All the models are surfers from California, so it's super authentic', noted Linnetz. 'For me, it's all about the details; I don't really care about the clothes. The people wearing them is more important, not in reality, but in the cast. So I never expected to do a show, but I was up for the challenge. I never want to feel complacent or anything.'

The show marked Linnetz's first solo move away from his preferred format of lookbooks, and Linnetz was, and still is, a sceptic. Before starting his own label, ERL belonged to a very different side of the fashion industry. With a formal training in screenwriting, before he arrived at fashion design Linnetz worked with Lady Gaga and Ye (formerly Kanye West), working on set design, costume and film. Then, not too long into establishing his eponymous brand, he collaborated with Kim Jones on the Dior Men's Spring 2023 collection after sending him a DM on Instagram. 'These moments that seem out of this world have just happened organically, ' he explains. 'So, for me, I never even wanted to do a show. This is my first solo runway show, and I wonder if it will be my last.'

Linnetz wasn't able to show off his Californian surfers amongst the treasured Renaissance frescoes of the Palazzo Corsini, the show's venue which sits on Firenze's river, due to fears the protected artworks would crack from the soundwaves of the soundtrack the designer composed, featuring remixed editions of the Disney theme tune and Aerosmith's 'I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing'. Waltzing down the lime green runway, the Venice Beach boys rocked surfer-boy quiffs wearing wetsuit-inspired tailoring and metallic skater shoes. Lady Liberty did, however, make her way into the show. With ERL sprinkling their LA fairy dust across the Florentine city, one model carried the statue's famous torch. Symbolising enlightenment, the show suggests that in the near future, when Europe is engulfed by water and can only be glimpsed under the waves surfers ride, some fairytales really do come true.