At The Met - The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Costume Institute explores the importance of sartorial style in the formation of Black identities from the 18th century to the present day with a major exhibition scheduled for May.

As Andrew Bolton , Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute , recalls, the spring 2025 exhibition (from May 10 to October 26) is the first dedicated entirely to menswear in more than 20 years. More precisely, to find a precedent, we need to go back to 2003, and to &ldquo;Braveheart. Men in Skirts&rdquo;. Unlike the last major exhibition reflection on menswear, &ldquo;Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear&rdquo;, set up in 2022 at the Victoria &amp; Albert in London, the Met exhibition focuses on the identity-building meaning that fashion has taken on for the Black community , and in particular on the power of style as a tool to break down stereotypes and open up new possibilities, between exaggeration, freedom, transgression and spectacularity, in a time horizon that goes from the Europe of the Enlightenment to the great fashion capitals of today.

The exhibition was inspired by Monica L. Miller’s 2009 essay, “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity.” Chair of Africana Studies at Barnard College at Columbia University, Miller, who is the Guest Curator of the exhibition, notes: “Dandyism may seem frivolous, but it often represents a challenge or overcoming of social and cultural hierarchies. It raises questions of identity, representation, and mobility in relation to race, class, gender, sexuality, and power. The exhibition explores this concept as both a pronouncement and a provocation. The title of the exhibition refers to “superfine” not only as a quality of a particular fabric—“superfine wool”—but also as a sense of feeling particularly good in one’s body, with clothes that perfectly express who one is. Historical manifestations of dandyism range from absolute precision in dress and tailoring to ostentation and fabulousness. Whether a dandy is subtle or spectacular, we recognize and respect the deliberateness of the dress, the conscious display, the way this pursuit of perfection seems frivolous but can be a challenge or a signal of transcendence of social and cultural hierarchies. In the eighteenth century, dandyism can be simultaneously a vehicle of enslavement and liberation.

“It was imposed,” Miller continues, “and then quickly taken up by blacks caught up in the political realities of the time: the slave trade, colonization, imperialism, revolution, and liberation. Dandified servants, then known as “luxury slaves,” were used as figures of conspicuous consumption; as such, they immediately learned the effects of “dressing elegantly and fashionably” and its relationship to race and power. This exhibition explores the dialectic between being dandified and embracing dandyism as a means of representing oneself. In the exhibition, black dandyism is a sartorial style that raises questions about identity, representation, mobility, race, class, gender, sexuality, and power.”

The exhibition is divided into twelve sections, which explore notions of assimilation, distinction and resistance, ranging from “Disguise” to “Respectability” to “Beauty”, which documents how, after the social justice movements of the 1960s, black men transformed their previous social invisibility into a form of hypervisibility, illustrated by contemporary outfits by creators such as Marvin Desroc, Theophilio and LaQuan Smith. While the “Cool” section places cardigans, denim, and the Kariba suit that replaced Western clothes on official occasions in Jamaica, alongside outfits by <a href="https://www.lofficielitalia.com/fashion-week/botter-sfilata-uomo-autunno-inverno-2024-25-collezione-foto-look" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Botter</a> , <a href="https://www.lofficielitalia.com/arte/wales-bonner-moma-mostra-date-nuove-sneaker-adidas" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Grace Wales Bonner</a> and Bianca Saunders , and the section dedicated to the Zoot Suit celebrates the hyper-constructed silhouettes worn by a young Malcolm X and jazz musician Cab Calloway. The conceptual design of the exhibition was entrusted to the artist Torkwase Dyson, while the bespoke mannequin heads are by Tanda Francis, winner of the Laguna Art Prize last year with the sculpture “Rockit Black”, made from waste materials linked to the Black Lives Matter protests, the same ones she used for a public sculpture in Queensbridge Park.

Co-chairs of the exhibition (in addition to Anna Wintour) are exponents of contemporary dandyism, Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton , A$AP Rocky , LeBron James , supported by a committee that involves the Gotha of contemporary Black culture most committed to civil rights, from the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , the author of &ldquo;Americanah&rdquo; and that pamphlet, &ldquo;We Should All Be Feminists&rdquo;, known to fashionistas for having been featured on a T-shirt by Maria Grazia Chiuri at her first fashion show for Dior , spring summer '17, to the gymnast Simone Biles, from Dapper Dan, the legendary menswear designer with an atelier in Harlem, to Doechii, from Ayo Edebiri, the actress of &ldquo;The Bear&rdquo; ambassador for Loewe, up to Spike Lee, Janelle Mon&aacute;e, the sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson, gold in Paris, Tyla and the artist Kara Walker. The exhibition is sponsored by Louis Vuitton , in an operation consistent with the themes of dandyism and tailoring, which are part of the brand's identity, with the work of Pharrell Williams , the creative director of menswear and co-president of the Met Gala, and with the legacy of Virgil Abloh , Pharrell's predecessor from 2018 to 2022.

The 2025 Met Gala and the Costume Institute's 'Superfine: Tailoring Black Style' Exhibit

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