Ape’s Top 10 Of The Month: September 2026
Welcome to Ape to Gentleman’s Top 10 of the Month feature, where we curate the standout trends, insights and recommendations to help you live well and stay ahead of the curve.
In this instalment, we’ve handpicked 10 essential talking points covering everything from new-season menswear and grooming upgrades to drinks, culture and entertainment releases worth knowing about. Whether you’re looking to sharpen your wardrobe for autumn, improve your daily routine or simply discover the best new launches, we’ve got you covered.
Let’s explore how to make September your most stylish, successful and satisfying month yet.
SURI Core 1.0
SURI has packed a lot into its new Core 1.0 electric toothbrush. The dental challenger brand, known for its slick, ergonomic design and innovative features, has created a more accessible, entry-level brush without scrimping on functionality.
Clinically tested to remove 100% more plaque than an ADA-approved manual toothbrush, the Core 1.0 features a gentle haptic pressure sensor, two-minute quadrant timer and up to four weeks of battery life from a single charge.
The lightweight bio-circular plastic handle makes it well-suited for travel, aided by a built-in button lock and a plant-based head cover. The brush heads themselves are made using cornstarch and castor oil, and UK customers can send used ones back to SURI for free recycling.
A genuinely useful bit of circular thinking for something most of us replace several times a year.
Vuori Wayward Utility Duffle
Californian performancewear brand Vuori has a new bag. Well, not brand new, but recent enough to turn our heads while searching for a functional, high-capacity holdall that isn’t just a vast, uninspiring gym bag.
The Wayward Utility Duffle looks smart enough for a weekend away while still being practical enough to throw around at the gym.
At 70 litres, there’s plenty of space to work with, while the water-resistant, durable outer should hold up well during travel. Stowable straps mean it can be carried conventionally or worn as a backpack when required, and multiple internal pockets stop the spacious interior becoming the usual black hole of trainers, cables and clean underwear.
PATRÓN Silver
We’re reliably informed by the cocktail trend grapevine that tea is having a moment in alcoholic drinks. Not content with the mug, so-called ‘hard tea’ is growing rapidly, while bartenders and drinks brands are increasingly exploring tea for its aromatic profile, gentle bitterness and flavour complexity.
PATRÓN has tapped into the trend by enlisting chef and food writer Ixta Belfrage to create a PATRÓN Silver Tomato & Peach Iced Tea Margarita. The recipe combines the tequila with peach, tomato, basil, chilli and a syrup infused with rooibos, jasmine green tea, black tea and cinnamon.
You needn’t go quite that far at home. Tea-infused syrups, cold brew or even steeping leaves directly into spirits all offer plenty of room for experimentation.
It works particularly well with a versatile tequila such as PATRÓN Silver, whose crisp, unaged agave character provides a clean base for more aromatic flavours.
Late Fame
The biggest release of the month is undoubtedly Brad Pitt’s canine survival action caper, Heart of the Beast, which we’re keen to see, but in the interests of the underdog we’ve also been charmed by the trailer for Willem Dafoe-fronted indie Late Fame.
Dafoe plays Ed Saxberger, a forgotten New York poet-turned-postal worker whose work is suddenly rediscovered by a younger generation of creatives. Swept into their eccentric downtown circle and buoyed by the attention, he begins to reconsider his relationship with art, relevance and the life he has built for himself.
From afar, it looks like a film about legacy, creativity, belonging and the uneasy business of ageing, all of which makes for an enticing watch.
In cinemas 4 September
Greece: The Cookbook
We’ve not long come back from Crete, European Region of Gastronomy for 2026, and we’re ravenous for Greek recipes. Good job, then, that Phaidon’s epic contribution to its series of national cuisine tomes stretches from Macedonia down to the Peloponnese and across the islands.
Written by Vefa Alexiadou, one of the great authorities on Greek cooking, Greece: The Cookbook runs to more than 700 pages and hundreds of recipes, covering everything from sauces, breads and pastries to seafood, meat dishes and the trademark big hitters.
There’s plenty of Cretan cooking in there too if you’re looking to bring some of this year’s celebrated regional cuisine into your own kitchen. Yamas!
Kith x Salomon XT-EVO
Let it be known that we’re here solely for the Black Coffee colourway of the recent Kith x Salomon XT-EVO collaboration. The yellow isn’t for us. But back to Black Coffee and, wow, what a handsome sneaker for autumn.
The new XT-EVO silhouette combines a moulded TPU cage and breathable mesh upper with Salomon’s proven XT-6 tooling, plus the brand’s Agile Chassis System, Contagrip outsole and signature QuickLACE setup. Kith co-branding appears throughout, while subtle blue detailing cuts neatly through all that brown and black.
Needless to say, ours will be going nowhere near gravel, hills or actual terrain, but at least if we step on an uneven paving slab and water shoots up our inner leg, god forbid, we’ll be adequately prepared.
The Bayeux Tapestry, British Museum
The biggest gallery and museum event of the year is a tapestry. The tapestry. This is proper bucket-list stuff, with the Bayeux Tapestry returning to England for the first time since it was made nearly 1,000 years ago.
Stretching an extraordinary 70 metres, the embroidered masterpiece depicts the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. It’s both a remarkable work of art and one of the world’s most important surviving medieval artefacts, offering an almost cinematic account of warfare, politics and everyday life in the 11th century.
On display at the British Museum until July 2027, this is as close to a must-see exhibition as they come.
From 10 September 2026 to 11 July 2027
Book tickets at the British Museum
Uniqlo U 10th Anniversary FW26 Collection
It’s now been 10 years since Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran began their Uniqlo U partnership, designing seasonal collections that have consistently punched well above their high-street price point. This month marks the end of an era, with the duo’s final collection under their decade-long artistic direction landing for Autumn/Winter 2026.
Thankfully, they’re not going quietly. The 10th-anniversary collection continues the formula that made Uniqlo U such a menswear favourite in the first place: carefully considered tonal palettes, relaxed proportions, excellent outerwear and everyday basics that look considerably more expensive than they are.
Expect big coats, handsome mid-layers and plenty of clever fabric choices. A suitably strong sartorial send-off, and one you’ll want to get involved in before the best pieces disappear.
Arc’teryx System 0
We were listening to an episode of the 99% Invisible podcast recently that explored reclaimed materials and the strange fact that, particularly in housing, we rarely design with their eventual dismantling in mind.
It makes perfectly good materials unnecessarily difficult to reuse. Those ideas resonate with Arc’teryx System 0, a new circular design framework that considers what happens to technical clothing long after you’ve bought it.
The first piece to emerge from the initiative is the Sperro SV, a serious multisport mountain hardshell built using GORE-TEX Pro with an ePE membrane. Crucially, it has been engineered not only for durability but also repairability and eventual disassembly, with components and fabrics designed to be recovered and recycled when the jacket finally reaches the end of its useful life.
There are practical touches too, including an easily replaceable zip slider and three years of unlimited out-of-warranty repairs through Arc’teryx ReBIRD. Serious mountain protection with some equally serious thinking about what happens next.
Pas Normal Studios Autumn/Winter 2026 Off-Race Collection
As keen cyclists, we’ve always got an eye on the crossover between technical cycling gear and everyday clothing. It’s a habit. You can’t be in Lycra all the time, but equally, a lot of civilian clothing isn’t particularly well equipped for getting around on two wheels.
Copenhagen-based Pas Normal Studios has built much of its reputation on bridging that gap, and its Autumn/Winter 2026 Off-Race collection is another strong example. Scandi minimalism runs through pieces like the Off-Race Down Liner Jacket and Tech Corduroy Pants, the latter of which we’re particularly keen on.
There’s also a welcome use of wool, still one of the most underrated performance fabrics around, alongside practical touches such as reflective detailing and two-way zips for easier temperature regulation.
Functional enough for the bike, smart enough that nobody needs to know you arrived on one.
