Fashion

Mid-Pandemic, Ski Towns Are Seeing a New Influx of Year-Round Residents

Remote workers are looking for wide open spaces and settling on small towns with great powder. What impact will they have?…

When the pandemic shuttered parts of the U.S. last March, many companies discovered workers didn’t need to be in one place. And many workers discovered if you can work anywhere, then you can live anywhere. Some left urban areas for the suburbs—some relocated to the open spaces of Western ski resorts. According to MLS reports, sales and rentals are booming in mountain towns particularly. As Ben Fisher, a Park City broker, told the Wall Street Journal, “This was the busiest summer selling season ever.”

For young professionals leaving a major city, the main reason for relocation is the high cost of living, according to a Quicken survey. It shows 34% of millennials are now working remotely, a number which is expected to increase. Some experts predict tech workers will never return to an office: Microsoft announced that it would offer the option to work from home permanently, just as Facebook and Twitter did.

There’s an old saying about newcomers to ski resorts: “I came for the skiing, I stayed for the summer.” In these pandemic times, it’s morphed into “I came to escape a pandemic, and I stayed for the lifestyle.”

After graduating from Middlebury, Nicole Roos, 26, moved to San Francisco to work as a recruiter for an executive search firm. A Sun Valley native, she always planned to return home—someday. The pandemic accelerated that decision. “We spend so much time doing our jobs, so it’s amazing to be able to do work I love, and also take a ski run for lunch,” she says. “And I love the cultural scene.” Sun Valley offers a prime example of how Western ski towns, from Aspen to Truckee, have become more accessible, year-round mini-cities, with quality arts and culinary offerings. “Ultimately I now have a balance in my life,” Roos says.

A dream job at Facebook drew Bronwen Raff, 29, to the Bay Area. As a program manager, she works with international partners to advance gender equality. When Facebook said stay home, she and her partner, who works remotely for a sports media company, immediately questioned their location. “Before the pandemic, we planned to quit our jobs and travel the world,” she says. “Now we can do that with jobs.” They’re staying in Airbnbs as they explore the American West, while looking for what she sweetly calls a “forever place” to live. Now they’re in Bozeman, with great snow sports and Bridger Bowl ski area nearby. “The pandemic allowed us to create the life we wanted on an earlier trajectory than we anticipated.” Every mountain town they spend time in, they donate to a local charity and frequent the nearby shops. Up next? Colorado (she’s looking at Breckenridge and Carbondale).

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Entertainment

A$AP Rocky Turned An Entire Manchester City Kit Into His Album Rollout

Photo: DannyB Photos / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

A$AP Rocky doesn’t do album rollouts quietly, and this one recruited an entire Premier League club to help. Manchester City, PUMA, and Rocky teamed up on a limited apparel run tied to “Don’t Be Dumb,” his 2026 album, timed around his September 5th show at Co-op Live.

The centerpiece is a long-sleeve PUMA King jersey in black and archive gold, with “DON’T BE DUMB” running down the sleeve and AWGE branding worked in throughout. A bold “MANCHESTER” graphic covers the back. Fans could also add limited “A$AP 11” name-and-number printing onto the club’s actual Home, Away, or Third kits, while supplies lasted at retail.

There’s a players-only version too, and it never went up for sale. That one sticks closer to City’s usual sky-blue identity, with its own sleeve detailing and back graphic — the kind of piece that exists purely because a handful of people got lucky.

The whole rollout kicked off with a one-night pop-up on September 4th, when PUMA turned a spot in Manchester’s Northern Quarter into a pop-up cafe for the night, mixing football, music, and street style into one room before the wider release hit the stadium store the next morning. Some of those jerseys even came with golden tickets to the concert or that Saturday’s match.

Rocky has called the project true to his own design language, and it’s not even his only club collaboration this cycle — a similar drop with AC Milan landed around the same time. At this point, the line between fashion week and matchday has basically disappeared.

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Entertainment

Quavo And Lids Are Going All In On Atlanta With Their New Cap Pack

Photo: Finish Line / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Quavo has never been shy about his hat obsession, and Lids just gave him another outlet for it. Their new “Atlanta” pack drops September 12th, marking another round in a partnership that’s been running strong since 2019.

The collection is a love letter to the city, spread across three very different caps. One mashes up pinstripes, script lettering, and Braves branding into a single design, working navy, red, white, and light blue into the mix. Another goes the opposite direction entirely — fully iced out in crystal detailing, done up in black and red, with both the Falcons and the Braves showing up in the design. The third strips things back to an old-school “ATL” trucker cap in red, white, and gold, the kind of understated piece that lets the city’s name do the talking.

None of this is new territory for Quavo. He’s talked before about waiting on hat releases as a kid, and that same excitement seems to be what’s kept this partnership going years past most celebrity collabs. His earlier Lids run leaned on one moment — the Braves’ 1995 World Series win — but this pack pulls from the city’s whole sports history instead of just one highlight.

Lids has called Quavo one of the rare voices who can blend music, fashion, and sports without it feeling forced, and this drop backs that up. Given how fast his past releases have moved, Atlanta might want to set an alarm for September 12th.

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