With one week until the 2025 Met Gala, we wanted to take a look at this year's theme: “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” which (when it was announced) attracted mixed opinions online, some loving, some questioning, and some confused.
So, what is the theme exactly?
The upcoming exhibition will explore the Black dandy as its subject, looking at the significance of style and clothing on Black identities in the diaspora. The theme is inspired by co-curator and professor of Africana Studies at Columbia Monica Miller’s 2009 book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. The Met’s curation will showcase the Black dandy figure from its early days in the 18th century and travel through time to modern-day depictions in fashion and film. It’s the first time since the 2003 “Men In Skirts” that the Met Costume Institute’s theme has focused solely on menswear.
According to Vogue, the Met will “illustrate how Black people transformed from being enslaved and stylised as luxury items, acquired like any other signifier of wealth and status, to autonomous self-fashioning individuals who are global trendsetters.”
And, who is the Black dandy?
Dandyism is a cultural and style movement that started out in 19th century Britain. A dandy is a man with a luxurious lifestyle that prioritises opulence, elegance and good taste and physical appearance, “dressing wisely and well”, as Miller put it – think Oscar Wilde. Modern-day examples include André 3000 and his camp fits, A$AP Rocky’s avant-garde, experimental style, Prince in his purple velvet and ruffles, Billy Porter’s excellently curated style. But the dandy is not a man who’s just well-dressed, he’s also interested in “a negotiation of identity”, according to Miller.
Miller described Black dandyism to Vogue as “a strategy and a tool to rethink identity, to reimagine the self in a different context. To really push a boundary – especially during the time of enslavement, to really push a boundary on who and what counts as human, even.”
It’ll be an interesting theme, especially on Black male identity, exploring the discussion of who the Black dandy represents and showcasing a plethora of Black designers. The Met has had concerns raised about racism in the past, and so has the fashion industry, so it will be interesting to see the Met’s approach on the topic.
“I feel like the show itself marks a really important step in our commitment to diversifying our exhibitions and collections, as well as redressing some of the historical biases within our curatorial practice,” Met curator Andrew Bolton told Vogue. “It’s very much about making fashion at the Met more of a gateway to access and inclusivity.”
It’s almost guaranteed that the first Monday in May 2025 will have a red carpet populated by the most dapper of men, among some other bros who didn’t get the theme. But the co-chair lineup of A$AP Rocky, Pharrell, Colman Domingo and Lewis Hamilton will definitely not disappoint. Legendary Vogue fashion editor André Leon Talley would have loved this theme.
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