Fashion

Andrew Bolton and Nicolas Ghesquière Track Fashion’s Shifting Relationship With the Past, Present, and Future

The Costume Institute’s Andrew Bolton and Louis Vuitton’s Nicolas Ghesquière discussed “About Time: Fashion and Duration” at Vogue’s Forces of Fashion summit….

“About Time: Fashion and Duration” opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in late October after a six-month pandemic-related delay. At Vogue’s Forces of Fashion summit, its curator Andrew Bolton was joined by Nicolas Ghesquière, whose work for Louis Vuitton features in the exhibition, to discuss the show’s themes. All of the Met’s exhibits this year—its 150th anniversary—celebrate its permanent collection, but “About Time” isn’t a straightforward tour through the Costume Institute archives.

“Fashion,” Bolton explained, “isn’t about repeating itself, it’s about reinventing itself and recontextualizing itself.” And so he organized a series of 60 pairings or “interruptions” in which clothes from different decades—different centuries, even—are connected by shape, material, or technique. Ghesquière’s spring 2018 frock coat for example, is shown side-by-side with a riding jacket created for Princess Alexandra in 1902. Even more tantalizing for fashion lovers, a bubble dress from that Vuitton collection is matched with a bubble dress made by Cristobal Balenciaga in the 1950s; Balenciaga, of course, is the heritage brand that Ghesquière famously revived before landing at LV. “What’s interesting about Nicolas’s work,” Bolton said, “is when he looks at the past, he obliterates it. These ‘folds in time’ are about recurring motifs, but they’re emphatically of the time they were created.”

Ghesquière has spent time in the Costume Institute’s archives; he’s got a firmer handle on fashion’s past than many of his peers. Still, he says, his purpose is to capture the moment. “I think fashion brings collective and individual memories together. This is why when you’re a designer you have to acknowledge the world you are living in and to highlight styles and communities.” At his latest show, Ghesquière explored the idea of gender-neutral dressing. When future curators study it, what will it say about the time we’re living in now? Possibilities. “That’s what we are looking [at] when we see the young generations and the way they dress: the possibilities they give themselves with the exchange of silhouettes and clothes.”

To access Andrew Bolton and Nicolas Ghesquière’s conversation, visit Vogue’s Forces of Fashion.

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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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