John Elliott had an L.A. story to tell for his Spring men’s and women’s collections, his best executed yet—which is saying a lot, given the innovations of his last outing. And as we could glean from the setting—inside the concrete bowl of a skate park in New York City, complete with milk crates for seats—it had nothing to do with the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. As Elliott explained during a fitting before the show, “It’s my personal truth of life in Los Angeles,” which is not only the place he calls home but where his line is manufactured, too.
Turns out, narrating his L.A. life meant elevating the mundane and conceptualizing the random. The idea for bright pastel smears came from the time Elliott, a confessed sugar addict, accidentally wiped his Skittles-melted hands on his white pants. Forgetting to close the blinds before an extended honeymoon resulted in the sun-bleaching of a pile of clothes, which led to the subtle fading of a range of denim in the show. Inspiration even struck while waiting in traffic. Languishing on the 110, Elliott wondered if the use of bougainvillea, part of the city’s freeway beautification efforts, is actually beautiful. Short answer: yes. Long answer: custom floral prints on bowling shirts, zip-up blousons, and board shorts.
The process by which Elliott reversed the accidental and/or unfortunate is surprisingly labor intensive. The oil slicks, for instance, that emerge on L.A. roads when it rains after a long dry spell gave way to an experimental marbling effect across a range of French terry sweats, one for each shade of the slick. A reductive crackle effect on leather jackets, in collaboration with the Japanese leather company Blackmeans, returned in new styles as well as its inverse, a thick caked-on impasto technique, as seen in the first exit. So ubiquitous in SoCal, the colorful knit blanket Elliott keeps over the bench in his truck was reinterpreted by his Japanese factory in custom jacquard and turned into basketball shorts and tanks. As for shoes, he debuted a women’s silhouette with Nike called the Rebel Blazer and introduced new colors of the LeBron James x John Elliott Icon sneaker, an Insta-sensation (James was in the house as well).
But for all his eccentric whimsy, Elliott is seriously committed to his hometown. The collection is the beginning of a long-term partnership with the city, possibly the first of its kind anywhere—hence the show’s title, Supported by the City of Los Angeles—with 100 percent of proceeds from some items going to a neighborhood “that needs help,” Elliott said. He’s concerned that shifts in local policy could spell the end of L.A. as a manufacturing base and jobs creator. Any piece with the city’s official seal on it is part of the collaboration.
