On October 9, The Met (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), announced that their upcoming theme for next year’s Met exhibition and gala would be “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”.
The exhibit will last from May 10, 2025 to October 26, 2025 and will display a multitude of garments, paintings, and photographs that showcase the development and historical distinctness of Black menswear along with many contemporary Black menswear designers and tailors. The exhibits and gala’s theme is based on Monica L. Miller’s 2009 book “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity” that focuses on the cultural history and cultivation of “Black Dandyism” across the Black Diaspora.
Miller describes the upcoming theme this year focus on Black Dandyism 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”.
The theme has also been credited to be a tribute to former Vogue editor André Leon Talley, who passed away in 2022. Tally, during his prolific career in the fashion industry, championed for more inclusion and representation of Black creatives and designers, who, along with himself, often embodied a multitude of Black cultural expressions, including Black Dandyism.
The gala and the exhibit will explore Black mens style from the eighteenth century to now, and how sartorial practices by Black men have helped create the context for the development of the “Black Dandy”, while exploring how race, gender, stereotypes and sexuality has impacted Black men’s sartorial expression.
This upcoming theme will become the first Met gala theme to focus on race, and comes second to 2001’s theme “Bravehearts: Men in Skirts” to solely center around menswear.
Along with the theme’s announcement, the hosts for the gala were also announced, which include Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, and Anna Wintour, along with honorary chairman, Lebron James.
The term “dandy” is an eighteenth century English word that was often used to describe a man of society who places an “unusual” emphasis on his appearance. The word would eventually be irreconcilably tied to “flamboyant” upper class men who’s sexuality was often questioned.
The dandy would oppose the growing more confined gender expectations that were erected in late eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe that would eventually become a more negative social connotation pertaining to masculinity.
Over the course of the nineteenth century, common physical characteristics and sartorial habits of a “dandy” included being meticulously shaved at all times, perfumed heavily quite frequently, along with being elaborately dressed to the latest menswear.
While the usage of the word has primarily been centered around White European men, Black men too became crucial to the development of the dandy.
The “Black Dandy” specifically refers to Black men across the Black diaspora that were defined by their fine tailoring that showcases their own financial and sartorial individualism.
Because Black dandy’s asserted their own individual identity through their dress, Black dandyism became a political act that rejected racist and classist stereotypes of Black men that often negated the complexities of Black men and the individual worth and self expression.
Black dandyism served as a catalyst for other past and contemporary Black identities, subcultures, fashions and aesthetics, that all directly oppose gender and racial stereotypes of Black men. Black dandyism has helped Black communities create their own self-cultural expression that has often been dictated and peripheral to whiteness.
As someone who is personally fascinated by historical fashion, and more specifically how Black communities across the globe have incorporated certain sartorial elements that were the result of European colonization into their own distinct culture, I am excited to see how this upcoming year’s theme would be reflected in the gala’s guests.
While the overall reaction to the theme’s announcement has been positive, there was however a mixed reaction that was largely critical of not the theme – but of the Met itself.
Criticisms surrounding the Met were largely centered on the Met’s “shady” history, surrounding its lack of representation of Black American history along with the little reparations the museum has produced when it comes to its many stolen artifacts that the Met currently holds.
Many users on social media have also been critical of the lack of female co–hosts along with a sense of trepidation pertaining to how the guests will follow this year’s theme without appropriating or offending Black culture.
I agree with all these criticisms, and even question as to why no one with a career in fashion or at least a Black creative was chosen to be amongst the gala’s host’s but was instead given too of a bunch of well-known and established celebrities who all beside Lewis Hamilton, have little to no track record in the fashion. However I do see this as a major but still flawed step for a greater push for representation and recognition of Black designers and Black Americans impact on American fashion and culture.