This year’s Met Gala is honoring Black fashion for the first time in its 77-year history. It’s an indirect celebration to be sure. Although the Costume Institute’s Spring 2025 exhibition, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” for which the Met Gala is a fundraiser, examines the figure of the Black dandy, the dress code for the Gala itself is simply, “Tailored for You,” asking guests to adhere to a general theme of menswear. Still, this celebration has been a long time coming.
The Gala will celebrate the spirit of Black dandyism - a tradition of Black self-fashioning that challenged racist stereotypes by appropriating White cultural aesthetics. The dandy originated as a late-seventeen century European figure who emulated an aristocratic style of life despite being of middle-class origin. In Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling Black Diasporic Identity, guest curator Dr. Monica Miller argues that, by adopting the European cultural movement of dandyism, Black people have “styled their way from slaves to selves.” She aptly recognizes that Black dandyism emerged as a subversive racial performance. During the Enlightenment period, dandyism was imposed onto slaves as a demonstration of their owners’ wealth. By the Victorian era, Africans arriving in England began re-orienting themselves through European garments. Importantly, the Black Dandy’s style of dress was a social practice of sartorial discipline rather than unruliness. The emphasis on tailored fashion and refined style reflected a preoccupation with crafting a positive, pristine image of Blackness.
Today, the Met Gala has a mandate to reflect cultural shifts, as much as it is a fundraiser and celebrity party. Celebrity stylist and image architect Law Roach attested as much when, in the YouTube video “The Making of Vogue’s Met Gala Issue,” he expressed the raison d’etre for the theme. “This moment, especially what’s going on in the world and in our country, this moment seems so important. This is bigger than us as individuals. This is bigger than us as actors or actresses or models. It’s the combination of all of us coming together to create something beautiful for present and for future.” In the context of White nationalist conservativism’s acceleration in American politics, centering Black identity in this way is an affirmation of multiracial democracy. The decision to do so by fixating on the figure of the Black dandy, however, is a telling indication of the kind of Black cultural figure that liberal institutions have chosen to affirm.
Black aesthetics have been a dominant force in mainstream fashion for the better part of the past three and a half decades, largely because of the dominance of Black street culture. From 1982 to 1992, “Dapper Dan’s Boutique” was infamous for introducing high-fashion to hip-hop culture through extravagantly screen-printing items like bomber jackets, tracksuits, and leather apparel with Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Fendi logos. These ostentatious displays of European affiliation were certainly in the lineage of Black dandyism, but articulated through what came to be known as streetwear. The rise of streetwear, an aesthetic tradition that is entwined with Black American identity, was the essence of Black fashion in the 1990s and 2000s. Black-owned brands like “For Us, By Us” (FUBU), Cross Colours, Phat Farm, and Walker Wear intentionally developed their identities independent of reliance on European labels.
The trend of global fashion of the past three decades has been that of White brands using Black cultural aesthetics to re-make themselves and expand their global profit margins. This tradition of Black style has been a more pronounced contemporary cultural phenomenon than the Black appropriation of dandyism. Dapper Dan’s signature approach of heavily monogramming his designs with couture logos was so influential that in 1992 Fendi spearheaded legal action against him for copyright infringement, leading to an FBI raid on his store for counterfeiting, and, ultimately, forcing his store to shut down. Within a decade, luxury brands all began heavily monogramming their designs and featuring their logos more prominently, which further solidified their billion-dollar empires. As for American brands, Ralph Lauren known for its preppy, classic American style, released its streetwear-inspired Stadium collection the same year that Dapper Dan’s Boutique closed. While centering vintage images of track-and-field athletes, the Stadium collection was aesthetically distinct from the rest of the brand as it featured bold, colorful, graphic, text-heavy designs. To this day, it is considered one of the most coveted and influential collections in Ralph Lauren history, contributing significantly to the company’s overall brand recognition. By the 2010s, the idea of streetwear as a degraded, non-versatile form that could not be rendered in high fashion was put to bed with the rise of Off-White, Pyer Moss, and Fear of God. In 2019, the Business of Fashion ran an article with the headline, “Streetwear Took Over the Fashion Industry. Now What?"
Black culture has never had as much of an impact on mainstream American culture as it has in our post-Civil Rights Movement era. We are in the aftermath of hip-hop’s rapid aesthetic ascent and the seemingly boundless march toward progress epitomized by the election of America’s first Black President, Barack Obama. Nonetheless, our current political moment is characterized by “identity politics,” being scapegoated for any number of national failings by an array of figures from Bernie Sanders to Ezra Klein to Joe Rogan to Candace Owens. The leaders of this are as ethnically diverse as the liberal rainbow coalitions that have come before it. Central to it is the notion that responsiveness to the suffering of historically oppressed groups should be displaced by a whitewashed focus on the economy and cultural norms.
The Black Dandy is alluring at this particular moment in time because it represents how this resurgent conservatism can be managed. It insinuates that, if the presentation is correct, there can be a measure of self-determination within a regime of repression. Black dandyism is inspirational because it is not merely a photonegative of White dandyism. The Black Dandy signifies that the most regressive forms of traditionalism are no match for those who are insistent upon their right to be defiant in the name of dignity. But there is a difference between defiance performed through assimilation and defiance performed through departure. There is a difference between wanting a seat at the table and making a new table altogether. Black dandyism is unapologetically the former.
Dr. Miller argues that Black dandyism is both an aesthetic and political construct. Selecting the Black dandy as the cultural figure worthy of praise in this moment is, too, a deliberate aesthetic and political choice. Honoring the Black dandy’s decision to fashion itself in European influences and connections speaks to the kind of Black subject deemed most respectable in these uniquely chaotic times. It is a nod to a time when Black folks dressed in their Sunday’s finest to engage in civil disobedience against authoritarian terror.
In a 2018 interview with Hypebeast, the late Virgil Abloh defined streetwear as an art movement that started by embracing creativity with limited, ready-made means. Eventually, this became high art. He described it as “a way of thinking” and was clear-eyed about streetwear’s paradigm-shifting approach to fashion. On the first Monday in May, the fashion industry’s biggest and most prestigious event will elevate an ethos of boundary-pushing and self-making while fundamentally returning to its obsession with tradition. On the heels of one of the most groundbreaking eras of American fashion, it is a cultural reset.
