The 2025 Met Gala will soon be underway, with a few privileged guests arriving to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art early Monday (May 5) morning to take in the exhibit accompanying fashion‘s biggest night out, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.”
The exhibit is the first of the Met’s Costume Institute to, “deal directly with race, alongside, gender, class, and sexuality, and only the second-ever devoted to menswear,” according to host publication, Vogue. Alongside head curator Andrew Bolton, the presentation is curated by Monica Miller, professor and chair of Africana Studies at Barnard College and Columbia University. She is also the author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, the 2009 tome that initially inspired the exhibit and gala’s theme.
As the emphasis this year will be on tailoring, we can say goodbye to the lavish gowns of Met Galas past in favor of elite suiting, as exhibited though years of Black style and the influence of well dressed black men known as Dandies.
The exhibit also highlights three aspects of Black style that speak directly to Black life; “Respectability,” a section highlighting more traditional suiting often worn when “code switching” or blending in with mainstream style, “Heritage,” which takes direct influence from traditional African design styles, and “Cool,” which showcases ‘fits that have defined what’s hot and what’s not over the past 50 years.
Following tonight’s red carpet, celebrities will also enter the exhibit to take it all in. Check out some of its stand-out looks hours before the stars do below!
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