Fashion

5 Things We Learned Watching Taylor Swift’s Surprise New Folklore Documentary

Debuting on Disney+ as a surprise release, “The Long Pond Studio Sessions” is an intimate window into the making of Swift’s chart-topping album “Folklore.”…

“There’s been a lot of discussion about William Bowery, who is Joe, as we know,” Swift says, her response greeted with laughter by Dessner and Antonoff. “Joe plays piano beautifully, and he’s always just playing and making things up and creating things. ‘Exile’ was crazy, because Joe had written the entire piano part and was singing that Bon Iver part, the whole first verse. So I was entranced and asked if we could keep writing that one, and it was pretty obvious that should be a duet. We’re really big Bon Iver fans, and we knew that Aaron knows him, but I was too afraid to suggest it.” When Swift suggested it could be a duet to Dessner, he suggested Bon Iver immediately—so it seems that the decision was fated all along.

Is “Mad Woman” a shot at Scooter Braun? Swift remains ambiguous

Outside of the runaway success of Folklore, another story which has been dominating headlines this year surrounding Swift have been the twists and turns in her ongoing fight to reclaim ownership of the master recordings for her first six albums, the rights for which were passed to Scooter Braun after he acquired her former record label and were then recently sold to a private equity firm for a whopping $300 million. Swift has expressed her displeasure on multiple occasions at never being offered a fair shot at buying them back herself—as well as her frustrations that these sales were being overseen by Braun, the manager of fellow pop powerhouses Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, who Swift has referred to as a “bully.” (Swift has recently confirmed, however, that she has begun to re-record her earlier albums and will be releasing new versions of the albums, a move that will inevitably end up significantly reducing the value of the original masters.)

Given Swift’s propensity for reflecting what’s going on in her life within her music, many fans looked to the album’s twelfth track, “Mad Woman”—with its story of a woman being treated as delusional for wanting what is rightfully hers—as a more personal tale about Swift’s ongoing battles with Braun, which Swift appears to implicitly confirm in the documentary. “The first time I heard that piano bit you’d written, with those ominous strings underneath it, I knew this was a song about female rage, it has to be,” says Swift in her conversation with Dessner ahead of performing “Mad Woman.” “And then I was thinking the most rage-provoking element of being a female is the gaslighting. There have been instances of this recently with someone who is very guilty of this in my life, and it’s a person who tries to make me feel like I’m the offender by having any kind of defense. I feel like I have no right to respond, or I’m crazy, or I’m angry. How do I say why this feels so bad?”

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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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