ERL SS26 POISON IVY IS THE TWELFTH COLLECTION FROM VENICE BEACH

Eli Russell Linnetz named his Spring/Summer 2026 collection "Poison Ivy." The reference is botanical and toxic at the same time, which is a fairly precise description of what ERL does to you if you let it. ERL is the most specifically Californian brand operating in fashion right now. Not California in the way that surfwear is Californian, or the way that streetwear borrowed California geography for its origin story. ERL is Californian in the way that Venice Beach in July is Californian — the light, the heat, the particular quality of ease that comes from having grown up somewhere beautiful and knowing it. Linnetz was a photographer and director before he was a fashion designer, and this is evident in how ERL collections are constructed. The garments read as images before they read as clothes. Poison Ivy continues this approach: the palette references the saturated greens and yellows of a plant that grows where it should not, in gaps between the organized and the wild. The silhouettes are the same ones ERL has been developing since the brand launched — relaxed, gender-neutral, with a precision in the cut that the looseness of the shapes tends to hide. A flared trouser that drapes correctly requires more construction than a straight leg that simply falls. Linnetz knows this. His customers, who include a roster of cultural figures that tends to make the clothes look even more effortless than they already are, know this too. Poison Ivy carries a secondary reading worth sitting with. Poison ivy is a plant that looks harmless. It is present in nearly every American landscape. Most people only learn to recognize it after the fact. ERL has always operated in this register — present everywhere in culture, recognizable to a specific audience, invisible to everyone else until suddenly it is not. The brand has grown its footprint significantly since its debut at Paris Fashion Week, where it showed in the menswear calendar alongside labels that have been doing this for decades. The fact that ERL held its ground in that context — and continues to expand without diluting what makes it specific — is the actual story of Spring/Summer 2026. Linnetz is not chasing. He is making work that comes from a real place and trusting that the right people will find it. Poison Ivy is evidence that this trust continues to be repaid.