A$AP Rocky turns 34, and he celebrates like most Very Famous People celebrate: with a dinner at a highly exclusive Manhattan restaurant (Carbone, it's in Greenwich Village if you're ever in the neighourhood), and with a highly exclusive date, which, unsurprisingly, was Rihanna.
She dressed up with a black fit from Nordic brand Cecile Bahnsen. Because again, one makes an effort on birthdays. But it was A$AP Rocky's bag that really advanced his celebration fit.
As a grail from the Bottega Veneta's intricately woven line of Andiamo handbags – the same one actor Jacord Elordi was seen carrying around this summer – it's the sort of thing that's won incumbent creative director Matthieu Blazy a legion of fans. His Bottega Veneta is sexy, simple and sometimes futuristic (leather pieces are designed and reworked in such a way that they don't look like leather at all, but denim and cotton), and his current fandom includes the likes of Omar Apollo, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Kate Moss.
And everything else was from the brand, too. A$AP Rocky wore an oversized suit jacket fresh off the runway, cut from a Prince of Wales check, and boxy in all the right places. And those jeans? Yep, actually made and cut from the finest Italian leather too. It's in line with that whole ‘quiet luxury’ thing in which brands dial things back and let subtlety make the noise (as opposed to a glitchy logo print). In Blazy's own words to Vogue Runway: it's “casual comfort.”
Rocky didn't stop at the fit though. Instead of a paper birthday crown, it was a series of silver beaded snap clips: another entry to the current movement of hip-hop going hard on the schoolgirl hair accessories. Just two weeks ago Offset attended the VMAs with a similarly fresh set of clips on his head, and Jason Momoa and Harry Styles have been tying up his hair with scrunchies.
The greatest gift on A$AP Rocky's birthday? A$AP Rocky.