Off the MRKT Favorites: Must-Have Picks for October 2026
October in New York has a color, and this year it is pink. Breast Cancer Awareness Month runs straight through this month's Off the MRKT Favorites, from a Madison Avenue flagship shopping night funding research to a landmark hotel bar glowing pink for the cause. Around those, we have museum-worthy makeup, two essential bottles of Champagne, and a Jamaican rum that has been waiting 26 years for its moment. Whether you are shopping for a cause, sipping something special, or planning a fall splurge, these are the finds worth your attention this October.
Fashion does not get much more New York than Alice + Olivia's Madison Avenue flagship, and this month it is doing double duty. Founder Stacey Bendet, alongside Emily Rockefeller and Dr. Elizabeth Comen, kicked off Breast Cancer Awareness Month with a Shop Pink evening in support of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, with 15% of the night's net proceeds funding research. Guests personalized purchases at a custom embroidery and charm bar, made pink phone charms, and sipped Bricoleur Vineyards rosé, LALO Tequila cocktails and Macklowe Pink Manhattans while Quiana Parks, herself a cancer survivor and advocate, handled the music. The month-long initiative travels next, to Chicago with Giuliana Rancic and Los Angeles with Paris Hilton and Kathy Hilton, which makes this the rare shopping spree you can feel genuinely good about.
Over on West 44th Street, The Algonquin Hotel is wearing the cause all month. The Blue Bar Restaurant & Lounge has taken on a pink glow for October, with programming benefiting the American Cancer Society's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer. The drink of the month is the Sunday in the Park, a Sondheim-nodding twist on the Cosmopolitan built on E11EVEN Vodka, Combier liqueur d'orange, lychee and lime, garnished with raspberries, with a portion of every one sold going to the cause. Weekly happy hours from 5 to 8 p.m. add pink cocktails and live music, from Broadway performers to cabaret nights. Fresh off the hotel's completed renovation and the Blue Bar's refreshed menus, it is a very good excuse to revisit a legend.
Two New York icons walk into a vanity. Bobbi Brown x The Met, the limited-edition collection from the NYC-born beauty brand and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, wraps some of the museum's most beloved artwork around makeup you will actually use. Details from works by Henri-Edmond Cross, Gustav Klimt, Odilon Redon and Claude Monet dress up an 8-Well Eye Shadow Palette in golds, bronzes and browns, a three-in-one Brightening Blush, shimmering Luxe Eye Shadows, an Extra Lip Tinted Balm, and a Luxe Lipstick whose bullet is pressed to look like canvas. It is a little piece of the Fifth Avenue museum for your top drawer, and the most giftable beauty launch of the season so far.
For the splurge: Appleton Estate has brought back its Hearts Collection 1999, the Jamaican rum vintage first released in 2020, now returning after five additional years of tropical aging. The 2026 release is 26 years old, drawn from just 10 casks and bottled at 63% ABV, one of only 1,406 bottles, crafted by Master Blender Joy Spence in partnership with rum authority Luca Gargano. Expect chocolate, coffee and dried fruit up front, spicy, herbal and floral turns underneath, and a long, honeyed oak finish that justifies the patience. It is rolling out now at select premium U.S. retailers at around $500, and when a bottle has waited this long, the least you can do is not keep it waiting.
As the city turns pink and the evenings turn crisp, October proves that doing good and living well are not mutually exclusive. Whether you are shopping for research, toasting with Champagne, or finally opening the bottle that has been aging since 1999, this month's collection is all about savoring the season with purpose. We'll be back next month with another curated edit of the people, places, and products shaping luxury living. Until then, enjoy every fall night, every generous pour, and every moment that's unmistakably Off the MRKT.
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First look inside Fouquet's Residences in the Miami Design District: 40,000 square feet of amenities by RDAI, the Hermès store designers, plus a direct line to the 85-key hotel below.