THE ALCHEMY OF HYPE

Dior Men artistic director Kim Jones has turned the revered French house into a platform for artists and designers from outside the high-fashion world, honing his new vision for luxury with names like Air Jordan, KAWS, and Stüssy. His latest goes even further, as he hands the keys of the Dior atelier over to an emergent design sensation named Eli Russell Linnetz.

- SAMUEL HINE

It's a sunny afternoon in May, and the fashion designer Eli Russell Linnetz is sitting in a hotel ballroom in Santa Monica. Linnetz runs his brand, ERL, out of a studio a few miles away in his hometown of Venice Beach, where he is currently working with a team of two employees, one of whom is his sister. Today, he's surrounded by a half-dozen French staffers from Christian Dior, who are awaiting further direction. Wearing a vintage slime-green Ocean Pacific shirt, camo cargo pants, and goggle eyeglass frames, Linnetz looks a bit like the kooky intern who should be steaming a rack of shimmering suit jackets nearby. But owing to an act of creative audacity by Dior Men artistic director Kim Jones, who is tapping away on his phone nearby, Linnetz is instead commanding the room.

Linnetz, 31, isn't your typical fashion school alum on the come-up. A former opera singer and child actor-he voiced Tipo in the millennial touchstone The Emperor's New Groove-who studied screenwriting in college, Linnetz spent most of his 20s as a buzzy creative director and photographer for the likes of Kanye West and Lady Gaga. He launched ERL 2018 at the urging of omme des Garçons and Dover Street Market president Adrian Joffe, who saw in Linnetz a quintessentially modern talent. With the backing of Dover Street's young designer incubator, ERL's nostalgia-soaked reinterpretations of Cali-jock staples like jorts and football jerseys took off quickly. And ultimately led to his being tapped to guest design the Dior Men spring 2023 collection.

The call that sealed the partnership lasted less than a minute, according to Linnetz. “I feel like a lot of people, with the success of ERL, have said, 'Oh, we should work together, but that's gone nowhere," he says. "We'd be having conversations for two years. And with Kim, we had one 45-second conversation and he made up his mind."