Black menswear and the achievements of Black tastemakers will be centre stage at next year's Met Gala, as the theme for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit has just been revealed.
Famously held on the first Monday in May each year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in New York City, the Met Gala is an annual fundraiser that provides Institute with its main source of funding for exhibitions and events.
The dazzling event sees designers buy tables in the gala, with each one inviting celebrities or influencers to represent them and their designs on the notorious Met steps. Each guest is personally approved by American Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, making an invite one of the most hotly coveted tickets in the fashion world.
The upcoming show at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will be titled, "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style", and will explore dandyism in Black style and fashion.
Pharrell Williams will step in as one of this year's co-chairs, alongside actor Colman Domingo, Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton, musician A$AP Rocky and Anna Wintour, with basketball star Lebron James acting as honorary co-chair.
Menswear has undergone a shift in recent years, with male celebrities impressing as much as - if not more than - their female peers on the red carpet. At the centre of this shift are scores of Black actors, musicians and designers, who consistently move the dial when it comes to fashion.
Whether that's Colman Domingo's retro-inspired suits during this year's awards season, Donald Glover's rakish take on lounge dressing, A$AP Rocky's high fashion spin on street style or Billy Porter's extravagant ensembles that tell rich stories.
So the Met's focus on Black fashion, and specifically the Black dandy and his role in fashion, is perfectly timed.
Monica Miller, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University, will act as a guest curator, working with Curator in Charge, Andrew Bolton to track the evolution of the dandy from its earliest depictions in 18th century art to modern-day representations from the runways and film.
According to Vogue, dandyism is 'an exuberant attention to dress', and can be seen on red carpets and runways today. Miller elaborated, saying that Black dandyism is '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'.
The exhibit will examine dandyism as both an aesthetic pursuit, as well as a political one, and will explore themes like race, power, colonialism and immigration.
It will also feature some of the roughly 150 pieces by BIPOC designers that the institute has acquired since 2020.
According to Vogue: "The exhibition will be arranged by 12 characteristics of Black dandyism, an organisational principle informed by a 1934 Zora Neale Hurston essay, "The Characteristics of Negro Expression". The sections will tell the story of the Black dandy's evolution over time via not just garments and accessories, but a range of media that includes drawings, paintings, photographs and film excerpts."
The exhibit will include pieces such as an original zoot suit from the 1940s, all the way up to contemporary designs by Black designers like Pharrell Williams and Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton menswear.
The exhibit will run from 10 May – 26 October 2025.
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