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Louise Thomas
Editor
The theme for the 2025 Met Gala has officially been revealed.
The Met Gala – held each year in New York City on the first Monday in May – is a star-studded fundraiser that supports the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. On Wednesday, October 9, Vogue announced the Costume Institute’s upcoming spring 2025 exhibit, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.”
According to Vogue, the exhibition draws inspiration from Monica L. Miller’s 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. The museum’s exhibit will feature “garments, paintings, photographs, and more – all exploring the indelible style of Black men in the context of dandyism, from the 18th-century through present day.”
Miller noted that “dandys” were men from the 1780s who “paid distinct, and sometimes excessive attention to dress.” According to the Oxford Dictionary, a “dandy” is “a man who cares a lot about his clothes and appearance.” Dandyism is both an identity and concept.
“In the 18th century, dandyism could be both a vehicle of enslavement and liberation. It was also imposed upon and quickly taken up by Black people swept up into the political realities of the time,” Miller said at a Costume Institute press conference on Wednesday. “This exhibiton, ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,’ explores the dialectic between being dandified and taking on dandyism as a means for self-fashioning. In the show, Black dandyism is a sartorial style that asks questions about identity, representation, mobility, race, class, gender, sexuality, power.”
Historical and contemporary garments, accessories, paintings, photos, film, and decorative art will be organized under 12 non-definitive sections to present dandyism as a sartorial style, detailing the evolution of the Black dandy. Ownership, “juke,” and cosmopolitanism, will be three of the exhibit’s main themes.
Ownership will epitomize and describe the intersection between “being owned” and “owning it,” featuring a purple and gold-trimmed coat worn by an enslaved man from Maryland in the 1770s. The “juke” section will focus on “Zoot suits,” a finely tailored ensemble with an exaggerated silhouette that “gleefully amplifies the strut or turn on the dance floor,” as described by Miller, and worn by Malcom X. These Zoot suits, some from the 1940s, challeged societal perception around masculinity, sexuality, and acceptable Black propriety. Lastly, cosmopolitanism will explore Black dandyism in the context of an “interconnected, sophisticated Black diasporic world.”
The work of several Black designers, like Grammy-winning producer and Louis Vuitton’s Menswear Creative Director Pharrell Williams, will be displayed in the contemporary section as well as designs by Off-White founder Virgil Abloh, who tragically passed away in 2021.
In line with the menswear-inspired exhibit, Williams will serve as co-chair. Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton, actor Colman Domingo, and rapper A$AP Rocky were also announced as co-chairs for the 2025 Met Gala, while legendary basketball player LeBron James was named honorary co-chair. Of course, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour will once again preside over the Met Gala as co-chair.
“They’re all men who aren’t afraid to take risks with their self-presentation. They take advantage of classic forms, but they also remix them and break them down in really new ways,” Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge, said of the co-chairs. “I think Black men and Black designers are very much at the forefront of this new renaissance in menswear.”
The event will mark the first time since 2003’s “Men in Skirts” that the Costume Institute has debuted an exhibit exclusively focused on menswear. Miller, whose book serves as inspiration for “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” will serve as guest curator alongside Bolton.
Last year, the Costume Institute displayed its “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” exhibit, which was centered around 50 historically significant pieces, some too fragile ever to be worn again. As such, attendees were instructed to follow a dress code loosely labelled “The Garden of Time,” which takes inspiration from a short story of the same title, written by JG Ballard in 1962.
Bad Bunny, Chris Hemsworth, Jennifer Lopez, Zendaya, and Wintour all served as co-chairs for the 2024 Met Gala.
The dress code for the 2025 Met Gala will be announced early next year, according to Vogue.
The 2025 Met Gala will take place on Monday, May 5, 2025, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” exhibit will run from May 10 to October 26, 2025.
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