John Elliott Spring 2024 Menswear Collection

“When the Silicon Valley Bank collapse happened,” said John Elliott, “I started thinking about the disappearance of the American dream. It sort of turned into a rant, honestly. But that became the root of the spring collection, which I’ve called ‘Fading Prospects.’”

The great hope—and look—often associated with American living was an ideal crafted by a generation now in its twilight, and a picture that’s being dissolved by time moving ever more swiftly. Yet much of its wardrobe codes remain, lingering in sartorial inertia. For spring Elliott took a key tenet—prep—and gently subverted it. “It’s a rejection of prep. It’s dirty prep. It’s intentionally destroyed prep,” he said. Or, more theatrically: “It’s like if you took prep to Los Angeles and left it in the back of a pickup truck, only to find it years later.”

That meant sailing jackets that had been acid washed, outsized polos that were purposefully sun-faded and dirt-scraped, and sunset-dyed rugby shirts that had been aggressively frayed and “fucked up” at the edges. A heavy and luxe brown leather blazer was manipulated to give it an extra-aged effect. Thick gauge sweaters were printed with trompe-l’œil cable knit graphics. It didn’t look preppy at all, which was Elliott’s intention, but you could recognize his root all the same.

The really desirable thing about Elliott’s work is that if he’s trying something novel, there’s still a high degree of wearability and intelligence. His work is always Californian, attenuated in color and stylish in its post-athleisure off-duty refinement. Yet look closely and the details are pretty forward-thinking—see, for spring, super-cropped bombers or inside-out varsity stripes on a cardigan’s hem. And even though the designer said this latest collection was “a new stylistic language for the brand,” it seemed more of a strong dialect within his own outstanding vernacular. We’ll say it with him: prep is dead, long live prep.