Fashion

How is Burberry making cashmere more sustainable?

As part of a five-year initiative, the brand is working with goat herders in Afghanistan to ensure the luxury fibre is produced as responsibly as possible. Here’s what you need to know….

“Cashmere is a really important raw material for the luxury fashion industry,” Pam Batty, secretary to the Burberry Foundation and VP of corporate responsibility at Burberry, tells Vogue. “We chose Afghanistan [for the program] because it’s the world’s third largest producer of cashmere after China and Mongolia. We were also very aware of the social and economic challenges [faced by] the people of Afghanistan—it’s suffered from years of conflict and has been impacted significantly by climate change.”

What does Burberry’s cashmere initiative involve?

Despite 90% of goats in Afghanistan producing cashmere, the vast majority of herders are simply not aware of its value as a luxury raw material. “They’re sitting on a goldmine, if the right techniques are employed,” says Agnė Baltaduonytė, advocacy manager at Oxfam in Afghanistan, which is partnering with Burberry on the initiative. “It starts with knowledge: ‘This is how you clean it’, ‘This is how you process it’.”

Helping goat herders to form collectives allows them to get higher prices for their cashmere. Previously, individual herders would have to sell to middlemen rather than the big traders—meaning they’d be paid significantly less. In less than three years, the initiative has helped raise the price of cashmere in Afghanistan from $17 per kg in 2017 to as high as $31 per kg in 2019. “Now herders have access to one-stop shops inside their communities, where they can collect their cashmere [together] and sell a larger amount for a much higher price,” says Mohammad Ali Roshan, cashmere program manager at Oxfam in Afghanistan.

Empowering women, who play a crucial role in these herding communities, is another key aspect of Burberry’s cashmere initiative. “Women are often the ones working with livestock, doing the de-hairing [separating fine cashmere from the coarser hairs],” Baltaduonytė says, adding that 28% of the herders supported through the initiative so far are women. “We’ve been trying to promote women in leadership positions, and having female coordinators at the stop shops.”

Image may contain Nature Outdoors Field Grassland Animal Cattle Mammal Cow Herd Human Person and Bird — Herder Amir Shah attends to his goats on a graveyard of the village of Yaka Tal.Joel van Houdt for Burberry

How will the initiative help to protect the environment?

Ensuring that herders in Afghanistan have financial security is important from an environmental perspective, too. “We are seeing overstocking of pastures, but it’s not cashmere that’s producing that situation—there are a lot of different livestocks that Afghan producers have,” explains Andrew Nobrega, global programs director at PUR Projet, a bespoke project development company working on the initiative. “If we want to see a reduction of overstocking, we need to improve the livelihoods of the producers so they have the flexibility to help manage those ecosystems in a better way.”

Tweet LinkedIn PinShares0

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.

Tweet LinkedIn PinShares0

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.

Tweet LinkedIn PinShares0