Fashion
Why the Success of the Pfizer Vaccine Trial Is Personal for Me
For the past three months, I have been a volunteer participant in the Pfizer vaccine trial study trying to find a cure for COVID-19….

It’s important to note that this a double-blind study, which means one half of the study gets the vaccine and the other gets the placebo, so I won’t know which I got–the actual vaccine or the placebo—until the study gets unblinded.
Also the news that the vaccine is coming doesn’t mean the pandemic is behind us. While this trial is a very exciting tangible step, this is not the end of the pandemic. We still have months to go, and even when the vaccine is widely available, probably sometime between spring and summer of 2021, there will still be hurdles, including capacity and delivery. (The Pfizer vaccine, like the Moderna one, requires two shots, approximately 21 days apart.
Then there’s the question of vaccine hesitancy. Four years of Trumpism has been very bad for scientists and for American’s belief in science. You’ll remember that in 2007, a pre-presidency Donald Trump postulated that vaccines might be responsible for the uptick in autism (they’re not), an irresponsible statement he has never retracted. And only about half of Americans say they would take the COVID-19 vaccine, perhaps fearing it will be rushed to market before its safety has been proven. The good news about this coronavirus vaccine is that the efficacy is so high that it will take less time to get to herd immunity. And a new Biden administration, one that actually believes in science, may be able to convince more people that this vaccine will be safe.
This week, when my podcast colleague Rick Wilson and I interviewed Dr. Eric Topal, a noted medical researcher and author, he called the new vaccine a “super human vaccine,” the kind that, like the measles vaccine in the 1960s, could eradicate an illness with its efficacy.
Pfizer and Moderna aren’t the only players in this game, of course. There are still a lot of vaccine trials going on around the world and volunteers are needed. (My husband recently enrolled in a different vaccine trial.)
At the White House briefing on Friday, at which Trump tried to claim credit for the Pfizer vaccine and also refused to answer questions about when he would concede the election to Joe Biden, Moncef Slaoui, the person in charge of Operation Warp Speed, reiterated there is still much work to do. “I would like to take this opportunity to invite as many Americans as possible who would like to volunteer to participate in these clinical trials,” Slaoui said, “as that’s the only way we are able to achieve a demonstration of the safety and the efficacy of these vaccines.”
We have an opportunity to do good here. I am not a particularly brave person, but in a country with uncontrolled virus spread I’d much rather take my chances with the vaccine than with the virus. As I write this column, tens of thousands of Americans are getting infected with coronavirus.
You have a chance to save others and change the course of history. Will you do it? I did.
Entertainment
A$AP Rocky Turned An Entire Manchester City Kit Into His Album Rollout
A$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.
Entertainment
Quavo And Lids Are Going All In On Atlanta With Their New Cap Pack
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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