Benito Skinner Just Dressed Like a 2000s Movie Bully (Complimentary)

The Overcompensating star’s bleached hair and ERL polo are the good kind of nostalgic throwback.Valerie Terranova/Getty ImagesIt’s no secret that Benito Skinner has an affinity for the aughts. The 32-year-old comedian’s sitcom Overcompensating is full of era-specific signifiers, from its wardrobe full of striped polos and backwards caps to its throwback needle drops of bangers like Britney Spears’s “Lucky” and My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade.” So it was no surprise when Skinner showed up at Teen Vogue Fest in New York this weekend looking like he’d wandered straight out of a suburban mall circa 2005—with a contemporary designer twist, of course.Skinner’s look came courtesy of the Los Angeles label ERL, whose designer Eli Russell Linnetz specializes in elevating a particular Cali-soaked strain of millennial nostalgia. Linnetz regularly mining the aesthetics of surf-bro mall brands like Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister, filtering them through a sharper, more fashion-minded lens (with price tags to match).Valerie Terranova/Getty ImagesSkinner’s fitted, crest-embroidered polo looked like it could’ve come from a prep school uniform or old country club’s pro shop. His sun-faded chino shorts, meanwhile, hit right at the knee with the loose proportions of the oversized Abercrombie cargoes that every high schooler seemed to own in the mid-2000s. Paired with his freshly bleached hair, Skinner was a dead ringer for the jock bully with a secret heart of gold in every teen comedy. A few subtle styling moves, however, kept his outfit from drifting into full costume territory. A skinny leather belt and polished tassel loafers—two of menswear’s current obsessions—pulled the look firmly into the present.Linnetz has turned a generation’s worth of mall memories into legitimate fashion references, remixing familiar signifiers into something that feels both recognizable and completely contemporary. And as proven here, Skinner is perhaps the perfect poster boy for the look. It’s just a shame he left the puka shells at home.Sign up for Show Notes to get news on the latest runway shows, parties, and insider events on the international fashion circuit.Tyler Watamanuk is a contributing writer for GQ. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest, and Highsnobiety, among other publications. His first book, Bigger Than Fashion, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster. ... Read More