Fashion

Kenzo’s Kansai Yamamoto Collection Celebrates the Work of Two Japanese Fashion Legends

Kenzo’s artistic director Felipe Oliveira Baptista discusses his new collaboration that pays homage to two fashion legends, Kenzo Takada and Kansai Yamamoto….

This year, fashion lost two of its most exuberant talents in Kenzo Takada and Kansai Yamamoto. The Japanese designers arrived in Europe around the same time, circa the late ’60s and early ’70s, and helped revolutionize fashion with their exuberant creations. For the current artistic director of Kenzo, Felipe Oliveira Baptista, the dream was always to create a collection that brought together the two creatives’ work in a new way. “What really started me on this idea was their common burst of joy, intuition, and freedom,” Baptista writes. “What a delightful idea to start a dialogue between these two pioneers and punks of fashion.”

After meeting with both designers in 2019 and receiving their blessing, Baptista began imagining what a Kenzo x Kansai collection would look like. “Kenzo and Kansai were obsessed by animalia, and both endlessly reinterpreted traditional representations of animals in Japanese art,” Baptista says. “Animals and animal prints often gained a pop-manga treatment at Kansai, while at Kenzo it was more about their celebration and interaction with nature.” Both designers also appreciated youth culture, comfort, and movement, as well as an overarching sense of joy. Most importantly, Baptista notes, “Both believed that fashion should talk to everyone.”

The Kenzo x Kansai Yamamoto collection being unveiled today is a posthumous tribute to those values. Photographed in Paris, Baptista’s interpretations of Kenzo’s and Kansai’s work include T-shirts, jackets, pants, and accessories featuring animal graphics, Japanese text, and a bit of in-your-face color. “I believe this is probably how both Kenzo and Kansai would have liked to be remembered. Both dedicated their lives to infusing joy into the world,” he says. “My favorite piece would be a black T-shirt with a Kansai tiger head in the front and on the back, in Japanese calligraphy handwritten by Kansai Yamamoto himself, three lines that read: Kenzo, Kansai, Felipe.”

The collection will go on sale on November 30. Think of it as a significant memento of 2020, a poignant tribute to what fashion has lost and a small sign of where we might go from here.

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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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