The excitement building around “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” the new exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute looking at the history of Black style through the lens of dandyism, has been undeniable. (It has already raised $31 million, a new record for the museum.) That excitement only grew at this morning’s press preview, where a standing-room-only crowd assembled to hear remarks from The Met’s CEO, Max Hollein; Met Gala cohost Colman Domingo; and co-curators Andrew Bolton and Monica L. Miller.
“Superfine” is inspired by Miller’s 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, which Bolton came across following the passing of André Leon Talley in 2022—an event that he also credits as being “the catalyst for the show.”
Besides Talley, Bolton mentioned in his remarks other “ancestor figures” that informed the exhibition, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, and Virgil Abloh, the founder of Off-White and creative director at Louis Vuitton men’s until his passing in 2021. “Virgil himself was acutely aware of the figure of the dandy, and it was even in his ‘Vocabulary According to Virgil Abloh,’” said Bolton. His definition reads: “An 18th-century label for the obsessive male dresser later defined by Charles Baudelaire as the male aspiration to becoming ‘uninterruptedly sublime.’”
Uninterruptedly sublime: “I can’t think of a better phrase not only to describe the Black dandy but also what Monica’s achieved in ‘Superfine,’” Bolton continued. “She offers a vision of the Black male body that is constituted outside limiting identity marks of race, gender, and sexuality. A vision that is defined inclusively, not in terms of opposition, and what transpires is a story of liberation and emancipation through sartorial experimentation. [It is] a story in which fashion, masculinity, and Blackness converge in expressions of self-creation and self-intention, self-possession and self-determination, self-annunciation and self-actualization. For Virgil, the Black dandy is part of what he called the ‘Black imagination,’ the way of manifesting Black dreams in real life, and in the exhibition Monica explores how these dreams are realized and made tangible, and in so doing she highlights the liberated concept of the imagination itself.”
Miller began her own remarks by quoting a passage from Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man, where the title character looks down a subway platform and notices three young men wearing zoot suits. It ends with one of them being described as “one of those African sculptures distorted in the interest of a design. Well what design and whose?” “What Ellison is describing here is an Invisible Man’s query into men who are full of presence,” she explained. “He sees their dandyism, the synergy between their clothing, individuality, and collectivity. He recognizes their dandyism as a practice of distinction, of association, and provocation. He sees the future in them.” She continued, “Dandyism is by definition an act of refusal to fit into or even accept given or typical categories of identity.” The exhibition is broken down into 12 categories, and Miller explained what each represents and some of the special garments and items contained within.
But it was Domingo, a bit of a dandy himself, and wearing a dashing Ozwald Boateng suit, who brought the themes of the exhibition to life with a speech that honored his style icons: his stepfather, father, and brother. “My stepfather, Clarence, sanded hardwood floors for a living,” he began. “He wore canvas work pants and a flannel shirt. The trousers were lovingly patched up by my mother. But he came alive on Fridays, when he came home with a paycheck and a six-pack of beer. He wore sharkskin suits with good shoes—usually Florsheim shoes—and a long black wool trench coat. And he wore something that my mother gifted me right after his passing—a sapphire pinky ring that he wore on his well-manicured fingers. He kept his fingernails long, and I think that was such a defiance of his backbreaking work.”
Domingo remembered his dad, an ordained minister who showed up—“when he showed up”—in flashy outfits and “drove a canary yellow Cadillac with a white roof,” a description that made the room ooh appreciatively. “You see where I get my inspiration,” he exclaimed in return.
“I stand here representing so many generations of men who have liberated themselves through style,” he went on. “I stand here representing my fellow Met Gala co-chairs A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, Lewis Hamilton, LeBron James; and I stand on the shoulders of André Leon Talley, of Bayard Rustin, Dapper Dan, of Ozwald Boateng, Sidney Poitier, Prince, Harry Belafonte, James Baldwin, and so many others.” Domingo ended his speech with a quote from the American playwright and director George C. Wolfe. “The quote is often used to highlight the innovative spirit of Black people. George said, ‘God created Black people, and Black people created style.’” He smiled. “You’ll see that in so much more in this great exhibit.”
“Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” opens to the public at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 10.
