Fashion

Now Is the Time to Close Your COVID-19 Circle

It’s imperative that young, healthy, mobile people like myself reconsider how many people we’re coming into contact with; otherwise, we run the risk of infecting people who are far worse-positioned to recover from COVID-19 than we are….

There’s simply no way to get around it: COVID-19 cases are rising exponentially around the country, including in cities like New York and Los Angeles that were particularly hard-hit when the disease first entered the U.S. this spring. Chicago is on lockdown as of Monday, hospitals in Missouri are turning people away, and another school shutdown looms in New York. While all of this horror unfolds, the question we all thought we’d definitively answered in March has returned with a vengeance: What do we do?

In an ideal world, the federal government would take greater responsibility in helping the U.S. stem the tide of COVID-19 infections. Unfortunately, though, we still live in Trump’s America, and even liberal politicians like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio seem more concerned with issuing panicked exhortations on Twitter than shutting down indoor dining or taking any other meaningful steps to protect us.

Once again, Americans find ourselves in the all-too-familiar predicament of expecting more from one another than we can from our elected leaders; it’s maddening, certainly, to feel our every individual choice imbued with so much potential harm, but right now, all we can do is try—haphazardly and imperfectly, if necessary–to keep each other safe.

Right now, keeping ourselves and our communities safe looks different than it did even a few weeks ago. To avoid stigmatizing anyone else’s choices, I’ll submit myself as a test case; I’ve been seeing friends, albeit exclusively outdoors and with the benefit of masks and regular COVID-19 testing, since this summer. I’ve eaten in restaurants—always outside, but still—and I’ve gone on dates, even if they always came with readily exchanged negative test results.

Overall, I consider myself a responsible, if occasionally flawed, adaptor to these bizarre times, and a few weeks ago, I would have stood by any of the above choices; after all, we know that masks work, and that outdoors is far safer than indoors in most cases. As the positive rate in my home city of New York climbs toward 3%, though, I’ve once again learned to change my behavior overnight.

Ever since someone in my social orbit tested positive on Monday, the rules I’ve vaguely adhered to for the past five months have solidified and gotten more extensive as my anxiety levels have soared once again. The multi-person backyard hangs I got used to over late summer and early fall are over, at least for now; I’m not sitting down at a bar or restaurant again until New York cases drop significantly, no matter how well-spaced or uncrowded its outdoor-dining setup is; there will be no dates with new people for a while, even if I see a PDF of their negative results beforehand.

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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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