What is Black Dandyism?
A Quick Break-Down of the 2025 Met Gala Theme
Happy First Monday of May to all who celebrate. Vogue’s red carpet live stream starts at 3 PM PST. Click here to watch. In the meantime, I’ll share some background on the theme and, of course, my predictions.
The Met Gala celebrates the Met Costume Institute’s 2025 exhibition “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” The Gala’s dress code is "Tailored for You," while the exhibition itself was inspired by co-curator Monica Miller’s 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity.
In the Introduction, Miller presents us with two images—an 18th-century oil painting and a photograph of Andre 3000—and asks, “Can the depiction of the enslaved boy, whose life was defined by service to an eighteenth-century European gentleman, reveal anything about the magnetic appeal of this contemporary celebrity…? How has the representation of black people been transformed from images of dandified “luxury” slaves to that of self-fashioning black dandies whose likenesses are now ubiquitous on the stage and on the street?”
In the following chapters, Miller examines “a series of transhistorical and transatlantic moments in literary and visual culture in which black male subjects can be seen understanding, manipulating, and reimaging the construction of their images through the dandy’s signature method: a pointed redeployment of clothing, gesture, and wit.” Black dandies are complicated. They share views with dandies of other racial backgrounds, while expressing, “through its own internal logic, black culture.” In short, their simultaneous mimicry and modification of traditionally white fashions is an act of resistance.
Stylists will pull cues from Miller’s many references, such as Isaac Julien’s film Looking for Langston, Franz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, or Spike Lee’s Zoot Suit. Figures like Malcolm X, Prince, and Andre Leon Talley will surely be honored, too.
The live stream is starting any minute. We’ll catch up later.