Fashion

Can a Cocktail Help Save the Planet?

Tamar Adler says cheers to a new generation of sustainably sourced spirits….

They are very much part of agriculture. And as many of us know, conventional agriculture can be wasteful to an extreme. “I started off by asking the question, Why would you make a spirit from a purpose-grown crop when you can make it from a byproduct?” Byrne told me during our tasting. In coffee production, for every pound of coffee beans, there are five pounds of coffee waste. By rerouting that waste from rivers, where it would turn into methane, Good Vodka saves some 15.76 kilograms of CO2 emissions per bottle.

Who else is making booze to feel good about? With cold months coming and the specter of another lockdown hovering, what better time to find out? A quick internet search reveals that a healthy number of familiar spirits have begun to take environmental impacts seriously. Absolut Elyx is carbon neutral, and its stillage goes to feed local cows and pigs. Maker’s Mark has founded a water sanctuary and plants American white oaks to protect native animal species. Casa Sauza recycles its wastewater.

I call Alicia Kennedy, a Puerto Rico–based food and drink writer, to help me sort the wheat from the chaff. She advises me to take a finer lens to the question of what’s sustainable. “I’d first examine the agricultural practices to see whether the agriculture is exhaustive or regenerative and leading to soil productivity.” She says I must consider the choice of crop, whether labor is being compensated properly, whether the water is being recycled or repurposed, whether the yeast is naturally occurring, and whether the spirit is being made at a rate and scale conducive to all the other conditions.

I decide to assemble a slate of spirits with a true dedication to planetary health, and a week later, I am sitting on a porch, six feet apart from Rosie Ward, bartender at Hudson Food Studio, and beside Piper Olf, the mother of my son’s best friend. Before us is somewhere in the realm of 1,000 glasses, plus ample ice and mixers ranging from Dolin dry vermouth to limes to various juices, freshly pressed for the occasion.

We begin our tasting. And we hit an immediate speed bump: Spirits that are made differently taste different from their conventional peers. A martini made with one part vermouth to four parts Scottish Nàdar “climate-positive” gin (saves 1.54 kilograms of CO2 per bottle; distilled from green peas!) tastes off-balance, sharp at the end, and ethanol-y in the middle. A boulevardier with Arbikie’s rye scotch whisky is unusually sweet.

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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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