“Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” hasn’t yet opened, but already a sense of importance, pride, and triumph—quite apart from the Met Gala 2025 red carpet—are attached to this exhibition, which was a long time coming. It’s the first show at the Costume Institute to deal directly with race alongside gender, class, and sexuality, and only the second ever devoted to menswear.
“Superfine” was organized by head curator Andrew Bolton with guest curator Monica Miller, professor and chair of Africana Studies at Barnard College and Columbia University and author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, a prizewinning 2009 book. The academic text provided the initial framework for the exhibition, which examines more than 300 years of Black style and identity through the figure of the dandy. Often male, the dandy is a person who is exceedingly careful and deliberate about their appearance. Mindful, you might say, but extra in place of demure. For Black dandies, there was/is much more at stake—including power and agency—than mere vanity. In fact, dressing well, or “styling out,” might fall under the category of nonviolent resistance.
For many of us, counteraction is the mode of the moment; it was the energy that propelled a significant number of the fall 2025 collections. It is difficult to shake the feeling that “Superfine”—which makes a compelling argument for syncretism by demonstrating how Black dandies created a sum greater than their parts, using elements from African, American, and European sources—arrives just when we need it most. With its positive role models, the show counters the toxicity of the expanding and exclusionary “manosphere.”
RIGHT ON TIME?
Though almost eerily timely, the political topicality of the exhibition was not deliberate, as the show was a year and a half in the planning. “For me, the history would’ve been important and interesting no matter what and when,” explains Miller. “When Andrew first called me about this, I thought to myself, Why now? And he had a good answer…that it really was about the conversations that he’d been having during the “In America” shows, and André [Leon Talley]’s passing, and then also thinking about what the Met Collection could actually sustain if it were to do a show that was more centered on Blackness and race.”
On the fashion front, the industry has been experiencing a menswear renaissance, and, says Miller, “the conversation about Black style has also been more and more and more and more acknowledged as a driver—this is Virgil [Abloh]—of how fashion works in terms of references and transformations and all that.”
The world has changed much indeed in the 20-plus years since Bolton curated “Bravehearts: Men in Skirts” at the Costume Institute. That moment, wrote WWD’s Eric Wilson in 2003, was “the era of metrosexuality—when the discourse on gender roles is dominated by Kyan, Carson, and Jai from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” Fast -forward to today, and RuPaul’s Drag Race is a major influence on self-creation and presentation, both of which are close to dandies’ hearts as well. While “Superfine,” like Drag Race, considers exaggeration, it is just one aspect of dandyism. There are “other elements of the exhibition where dandyism is much more about disguise, masquerade,” notes Miller. “There’s a range of performativity that’s very much related to dandyism in general, but then also particularly when it’s racialized.” Similarly, there’s a range of masculinity that dandies are continually expanding. A$AP Rocky in a headscarf or pearls is but one example. And, as Miller has said in a Met video, “Once you know about it, you see Black dandyism everywhere and in different modes.”
SUIT YOURSELF
“Superfine” progresses from the 18th century onward, but as with all things dandiacal, the chronology is “slippery.” One of the first pieces on display is a 19th-century livery of magenta velvet and gold trim that would have been worn by what Miller terms a “luxury slave,” and it harks back to the lavishness of the court of the Sun King. Turning to the right, on one of artist Torkwase Dyson’s raised “hyperspaces,” which somewhat resembles a proscenium arch, is a black military-inspired suit trimmed with gold by Olivier Rousteing for Balmain next to a dashing officer-style coat that belonged to André Leon Talley. The placement, it was explained, is deliberate and establishes the late Vogue editor, who also worked alongside Diana Vreeland at the Costume Institute, as an ancestor figure.
Talley—who Anna Wintour recently described as “a dandy among dandies”—is one of many characters throughout history that people this exhibition. Others are the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Prince, and the artist Iké Udé. Add to this list the Black designers featured in the show who are changing the landscape of contemporary menswear. Women like Grace Wales Bonner and Bianca Saunders, and men including Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton menswear, Willy Chavarria, and Raul Lopez of Luar, all of whom approach tailoring with a fresh eye.
Men and suits, suits and power: This is a concept that reaches back in time to the “great renunciation” of the late 18th century, when in WASP societies, masculine peacockery was put aside in favor of a kind of penitent Puritanism that took the form of a dark-hued suit, which became, says Miller, “associated with whiteness.” In this scenario, the suit is a container or exoskeleton that covers or masks the body. In contrast, Miller is interested in the body that wears the clothing, and how clothing is a way to define selfhood and the body. A good example of this is IB Kamara for Off-White’s his-and-hers suits with anatomical embroidery.
Discipline is a core tenet of dandyism, and while Black dandies certainly took advantage of fashion’s reveal/conceal binary, the garments on display repudiate any idea of renunciation. In fact, explains Miller, “it’s sort of like, let’s take this symbol of white masculine power and just really deconstruct, reconstruct, add on, take away, put it in another fabric—just really, really mess with it.” This is well illustrated by a suit in the show that appears to be in the process of becoming by Who Decides War’s Ev Bravado and Téla D’Amore. Then there is the sinuous lavishness of the zoot suit that emerged from Harlem in the 1940s.
WE ARE FAMILY
In its head-on consideration of race and gender, “Superfine” is a groundbreaking exhibition—and a celebratory one. At the same time, it relates to Bolton’s mission to reframe fashion as a tool for life. In “In America: A Lexicon of Style” (2021), the curator created a taxonomy of emotions attached to clothing in the context of nationality and locality. Last year’s “Sleeping Beauties” considered the sensory aspects (sounds, smells) of garments as objects and keepers of history. “Superfine” delivers the prince who kisses the public awake to Black excellence as it is variously expressed in the exhibition’s 12 subthemes, which include respectability and distinction and beauty.
Dandyism is a form of expression of self-love that is projected outward or passed along. One of the takeaways from “Superfine” is that Black dandyism is generous and expansive. It’s also powerful and in full bloom, driving the fashion’s current menswear renaissance. In another instance of perfect timing, the British Jamaican musician SBK (Lanardo Smith) just released a single that seems to capture the elevation of the Black dandy, singing:
“Finally
we can be
who we are
what we dream
this is us.”
See all of our Met Gala 2025 coverage.
