Black Dandyism Shines at Met Gala 2025 with Superfine Tailoring

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In the upcoming spring exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its glamorous companion event, the Met Gala, this year’s theme pays homage to the bold sartorial legacy of the Black dandy. This tradition of daring tailoring among Black men is celebrated as an assertion of identity and defiance.

Entitled Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, the Costume Institute’s eagerly awaited showcase delves into the phenomenon of Black dandyism—a cultural practice in which a man’s flamboyant attire serves as a potent statement of selfhood and resistance. In this context, Black dandyism emerges as more than mere fashion; it represents a staunch refusal to be confined by societal limitations, a jubilant affirmation of Black heritage, and a dynamic movement rooted in resilience, pride, and historical memory.

Among the treasures on display is an 1885 portrait of the celebrated abolitionist Frederick Douglass, captured in exquisite formalwear—an image that epitomises how clothing functioned as a vehicle for Black agency and visibility. Yet the origins of this sartorial assertion lie in a stark absence. As Monica L. Miller argues in Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity (2009), the enslaved Africans who arrived on American shores were stripped bare, both literally and metaphorically—a tabula rasa upon which European and colonial fashions were imposed without regard for personal identity.

It was this enforced anonymity that spurred the dandy’s project: a determination to reclaim self-definition and to imagine new socio-political spaces in which Blackness could flourish on its own terms, rather than as an objectified construct of white supremacy. Drawing on Miller’s groundbreaking research, the exhibition traces over three centuries of transatlantic Black identity formation through the prism of men’s tailoring.

On the night of the Met Gala—whose theme, “Tailored for You,” directly echoes the exhibition’s title—hosts Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, and Pharrell Williams will guide guests past sumptuous displays alongside Vogue’s Anna Wintour and honorary co-chair LeBron James.

The show encompasses garments, artworks, photographs, and film, organised around twelve interwoven facets of dandyism—from Ownership and Heritage to Respectability, Beauty, and Cool. Miller, serving as guest curator, explains that the word “superfine” alludes to a delicate wool weave symbolic of luxury, but also to the sensation of feeling one’s finest, underscoring how dress can convey powerful emotions.

At its core, dandyism asserts individuality through subtle tailoring. In the antebellum South, enslaved people were clad in identical garments designed to erase personal distinction. Yet as soon as they could, they affixed ribbons, buttons, or bespoke alterations—small acts of defiance that laid the groundwork for dandy culture.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, some Africans brought to Europe as servants were dressed in exaggerated, archaic livery to amuse aristocratic audiences. Julius Soubise—brought to Britain as a child and later manumitted by the Duchess of Queensberry—flipped this script. Embracing and exaggerating the elaborate livery with diamond-buckled heels, lace trimmings, and streams of perfume, he startled polite society. Soubise’s flamboyance, combined with his wit and talents as a fencer and violinist, destabilised rigid racial and class categories, forcing Europeans to confront the possibility of Black excellence on their own terms.

Elsewhere, dandyism served as a tool of concealment and escape. In 1848, Ellen and William Craft employed carefully crafted disguises to flee Georgia bondage. Ellen, passing as a white invalid gentleman complete with a jaw dress and tinted spectacles, and William presented as her attendant; at one point William’s borrowed white top hat nearly exposed their ruse, when a planter lamented that his “master” had become overly indulgent. Their daring flight culminated in safety in England and later a return to the United States.

After emancipation, many Black Americans migrated from the rural South to burgeoning Northern cities, forging the first large urban Black communities. In 1920s–30s Harlem, a renaissance of Black art, literature, and music coalesced. Here, dressing with deliberation became an act of protest against lynchings, riots, and systemic prejudice.

In 1917, some 10,000 African Americans marched in the Silent Protest Parade along Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, clad in tailored black suits with women in white—an image of dignity and poise that stood in stark contrast to the cruelty they decried.

The exhibition positions the suit as a continuous thread in Black sartorial history. From the elegant tailcoats of the 18th century to the flamboyant zoot suits of the 1930s—first popularised in Harlem’s dance halls by luminaries such as Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, and the young Malcolm X—the suit has evolved as a symbol of communal assertion. Its exaggerated proportions served to claim space and mobility for a people otherwise constrained.

During World War II rationing, the zoot suit’s generous fabric became a target of resentment, sparking violent reprisals in Los Angeles where mobs stripped wearers of their suits and slashed them. Nevertheless, the style endured, resurfacing in the 1980s with Kid Creole and the Coconuts and later influencing MC Hammer’s iconic pants.

André Leon Talley, the first Black creative director of American Vogue, embodied this tradition. Born as the zoot suit’s heyday waned, Talley wore panel-checked suits and sweeping capes with equal élan. Anna Wintour reflects that for Talley, dressing was an autobiographical act—imbued with mischief, fantasy, and profound self-regard.

Contemporary artists and designers continue the dandy’s lineage. Photographer and essayist Iké Udé, whose self-portraits appear in the exhibition, argues that “whereas the self can be devoured by public scrutiny, it can be saved by private self-objectification.” His Sartorial Anarchy series riffs on global dress codes to craft a cosmopolitan wit that both embraces and lampoons dandyism.

Designer Foday Dumbuya, founder of Labrum, channels his immigrant experience—from Sierra Leone to Cyprus and England—into sharply tailored garments printed with images of immigration documents, transforming personal and collective narratives into high fashion.

The exhibition’s curator Andrew Bolton observed a renaissance in menswear, driven by Black designers at the forefront of modern tailoring. In a closing testament, Monica Miller likens dandyism to a jazz improvisation: each generation layers new variations on a foundational riff, ensuring that Black fashion remains in perpetual motion.

Superfine: Tailoring Black Style will be on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 10 through October 26, 2025. A companion volume by Monica L. Miller is published by the Met and distributed by Yale University Press.

Inspired by: BBC