Every first Sunday in May, stars and fashion designers strut their stuff at the Met Gala. The event organized by “Vogue” and the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art inaugurates an exhibition dedicated to fashion. That of 2025, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”, will focus on the figure of the African-American dandy.
The institution had not presented an event solely focused on masculine elegance since 2003. In the meantime, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement led the museum to address the history of costume by also considering black people, who had been ousted. The curator responsible for designing the exhibition, Monica Miller, is a professor at Columbia. She notably wrote the book “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism”.
In previous editions, the extravagant looks of personalities such as rapper Lil Nas X and singer Billy Porter have caused a sensation on the red carpet. One of the challenges of the Met Gala also consists of promoting fashion when it is embodied by black people, knowing that they form a community that has been segregated and invisible in the United States.
At the request of Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of “Vogue”, four personalities, rapper ASAP Rocky, actor Colman Domingo, F1 driver Lewis Hamilton and singer-turned-stylist Pharrell Williams will co-chair the evening with her. The event will also be an opportunity to recall that Pharrell Williams, artistic director of men’s fashion at Vuitton, is the only African-American to occupy such a position in a major ready-to-wear house.
