Ms. Miller hopes that visitors “leave with multiple entry points, familiarity, [the ability to] imagine themselves differently, and,” she added, “a little bit of soul.”

The Met has another ambitious show coming up and while their recent attempts to read the room have been impressively sufficient (see Harlem Renaissance and Flight Into Egypt), we can’t forget that they are decades late in meeting the moment. Substantive institutions, like slow-moving cruise liners, take time to change course. And this is why, only weeks after an Executive Order seeks to press ‘undo’ on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, celebrities from the A, B, C, and D lists will try their hands at menswear inspired by centuries of Black fashionable expression. Current circumstances have created a paradox: take inspiration from Bayard Rustin’s tailored silhouette but don’t generate any meaningful questions about why some of his most iconic suit photos were snapped in 1963 on an August-hot day at the National Mall.  

 

This year’s Met Gala, which will take place this coming Monday, is a precarious challenge for the attendees. The official theme for the event “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” might as well be an Olympic balance beam — if you nail it you’re among the best, but most are sure to slip and fall right off. Previous gala themes like 2018’s Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination and 2024’s The Garden of Time meant you could don a crucifix necklace and a floral gown, respectively, and get away with phoning it in without pissing anyone off. But this year, both under- and over-delivery will be a litmus test for whether one has “done the homework”, whether one shows their respect for the gravitas of the theme by hiring a stylist who’s in-the-know. 

 

Stylists who are likely to impress include go-tos like Law Roach, Olivier Roustieng, Dapper Dan, Aurora James, and June Ambrose — but there’s not enough of them to go around. (Ruth E. Carter, fellow Hamptonian and costume designer for Ryan Coogler’s 2025 film Sinners could also eat this theme up, but I don’t know if she dresses actors while they’re off duty.) Stakes are high. We’ll get to see who can model a Black fashion politic without tip-toeing too far toward appropriation or falling victim to fashion’s unique form of Blackface. (Remember Balenciaga’s $1,190 sagging pants and Gucci’s $890 ‘balaclava jumper’ design that looked straight out of a minstrel show?) I’m not sure whether to tune in to red carpet coverage or wait for the day-after think pieces, but I’m positive I’ll be heartbroken either way. Falling short on this theme isn’t just a fashion gaffe; it will feel like a personal affront and will most definitely upset me and my homegirls.

 

The silver lining to this ominous cloud of inviting celebrities of all races to pay homage to this particular strand of Black creativity is the accompanying exhibit at the Met Museum. It’s a long-standing tradition that the gala theme have an accompanying show, but this is the first time I’ve made advance plans to visit. The show is the balance beam that gala attendees will fall off of, as Beyoncé would say, the show is the bar. My inclination to lower my expectations is limited to the red carpet spectacle, I have full confidence in the exhibition because I got to take a peek at the “homework”. 

 

This exhibition is 15 years in the making, inspired by Monica Miller’s 2009 book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, which Duke University Press describes as a “pioneering cultural history of the Black dandy from Enlightenment England…to the cosmopolitan art worlds of London and New York”. In advance of the show and the Gala, the Met offered a preview of the exhibition not on their tony upper east side campus but at the historically Black Billie Holiday Theater in Brooklyn. From Harlem, the Met would’ve been an easier commute but I can appreciate the sentiment to bring the art to the people. The locale is also a nod to Weeksville, one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America, a tract of land purchased in 1838 by James Weeks, a formerly enslaved man from Virginia. 

 

Ms. Miller has co-curated the show with the curator-in-charge of the Met’s Costume Institute, Mr. Andrew Bolton. He was on site for the event, as was the Met’s Executive Director (whom I have only ever seen in Youtube videos posted by the Met) and Anna Wintour, editor in chief of Vogue, artistic director of Condé Nast, and de facto host of the Met Gala (whom I have only ever seen in photos of the front row at New York Fashion Week). Perhaps I’m wrong for being surprised to see them in Brooklyn since this was, after all, an official Met event, but I was pleased to see them join the audience and lean in to the truth.

 

Class was in session as Ms. Miller offered a preview of the pieces we’ll be able to see in the exhibition, as well as a sample of the show’s themes: ownership, distinction, freedom, heritage, disguise and more. She shared her hope that visitors “leave with multiple entry points, familiarity, [the ability to] imagine themselves differently, and,” she added, “a little bit of soul.” I was happy to hear her explanation of the photo of William Headley in 1864. The monotone photograph shows a man who’s dressed himself after escaping slavery. His cape — which like the foreground, the background, and even the man’s skin tone — appears sepia in the photo, but in life it was a verdant green. With this detail, the man’s proud stance, calm expression, and lifted chin take on new meaning: he has fashioned himself a free man. I’m not a fan of color-correcting old photos but it’s a travesty that so many of our ancestors are flattened into shades of brown no matter how much effort they put into sewing or saving up for their Sunday best. Without Miller’s context, I would never have known.

 

Following the preview, Ms. Miller invited two contemporary design duos to the stage: twins Dynasty and Soull Ogun of L’Enchanteur, a fine jewelry and sculpture outfit, and Ev Bravado and Téla D’Amore of Who Decides War, which specializes in tailored and deconstructed streetwear. The pairs discussed their design heritage, both were inspired by growing up in Brooklyn eager to see what was on the mannequins at Jimmy Jazz. Almost all shared the experience of pleading with their Caribbean and African parents to let them dress like the other kids on the block. These days, they don’t have to go too far for new ideas. They combine their diasporic heritage to inform their creations and mine for inspiration in their roots. The L’Enchanteur sisters explained, “there’s nothing new under the sun, but there’s so much more under the sea.”

 

Both pairs will have work on display in the exhibition and the conversation turned back towards the Gala. Ms. Miller asked the panel what, from their perspective, was different about this theme versus previous ones. Soull lifted her mic and answered bluntly, “The Black” and nodded a subtle sorry-not-sorry apology in Ms. Wintour’s direction. 

 

And that’s the part that has me hesitant about these Gala ‘fits. The ‘Black’ is what makes it interesting, and it’s also what makes it hard, even impossible. Well-meaning people can listen in on our conversations, attend our events, declare us their friends, and lift up our ideas but they’ll never be able to lay claim to that inner seed of light we carry. You can pay for our labor, but you’ll never own our pride. You can buy clothes, but you can’t buy style. I’m hopeful that the exhibition will tell true of our rhythm and our blues, that it will have space enough for sharp-angled suits and the stories of the people who wore them.   

 

blacklove 🖤 and starlight 🌟 

 

“Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” opens at the Met Museum on May 10th and will run through October 26th, 2025. Admission for New York residents is pay-what-you-wish. I attended this free exhibition preview co-hosted by the Met at the Billie Holiday Theater in Brooklyn on April 24th, 2025.