Fashion

Meet the Joe Biden Whisperer, His Sister Valerie Owens

Valerie Biden Owens has managed her brother’s campaigns for more than five decades, going back to his upset win in 1972, when he successfully toppled a two-term incumbent U.S. senator when only 29 years old….

That first Senate campaign together—when Valerie was still a teacher at Wilmington Friends School and Joe was a city councilman—cemented the siblings’ professional relationship, as well as their personal one. “A lot of people thought it was a fool’s errand,” Owens told PBS’s Frontline this summer, pointing out that Boggs “had been twice governor, twice U.S. House, and he was running for his third term.” The press dubbed it, “The Children’s Crusade.”

She added: “We weren’t running against the man. We never attacked him, nor he us. We were running for civil rights and civil liberties, for the environment, and to stop the war in Vietnam. So we were running because whatever the senator was doing, Sen. Boggs was doing, we thought were not effective in those—addressing those three problems that we looked at, that weren’t being handled the right way.”

And it was definitely a family affair. As The New York Times described it: “One brother, James Biden, took charge of raising money. Another, Frank Biden, managed volunteers. Their mother ran kaffeeklatsches. Ms. Owens’s first husband, Bruce Saunders, handled the budget.” Ted Kaufman, a former Biden aide, told the Times that Valerie Biden quickly proved a skilled campaign manager. “She was really good at the management part of the campaign,” Kaufman said. “She got a lot of quality people really super involved.”

In a decided upset, Biden won by just over 3,000 votes. But then tragedy struck. His wife Neilia and their 13-month-old daughter, Amy, were killed in a horrific car crash that also severely injured the couple’s two young sons. Though a grief-stricken Biden was on the verge of resigning his newly won seat, the Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield convinced him to stay. Biden took his oath of office by the hospital bed of his two surviving sons, Beau and Hunter. Soon after, Valerie moved into the Biden household to help raise the children, doing so with the help of the Biden parents and the two other Biden brothers.

But, as Owens told Frontline, Joe Biden had to deal with an unimaginable loss in his own way. “At nighttime, when you closed the door, he was still alone, and a widower and a single dad, no matter all the help,” she recalled. “And our friends were wonderful. The state of Delaware was wonderful. But it was a very horrible, horrible time.”

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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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