The legacy of black dandyism at the 2025 Met Gala

“Black is not just beautiful. It’s bold. It’s brilliance. It’s resistance.” While we may not know exactly who made this statement, it is clear that they could see what many have yet to comprehend. This assertion is often accompanied by figures like Steve Biko and Kwame Brathwaite. These leaders emphasized the importance of racial pride, resistance, and the celebration of black beauty.

In this regard, in 2025, the Met Gala came assertively and directly, weaving a tribute to the aesthetics, identity, and power of black fashion with the theme “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” It’s not just about tailoring. It’s about sharpening our gaze at the past, dressing in ancestry, and projecting the future. It’s about taking ownership of the narrative. And doing it right.

Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, by Monica L. Miller, published in 2009, is a fundamental work in the studies of fashion, race, and black culture. The author, a professor of literature and cultural studies, explores how black people — particularly men — have utilized clothing as a strategy for identity affirmation, political resistance, and cultural reinvention throughout history.

Central Thesis

Miller argues that the so-called black dandyism — or black dandy — is not merely a matter of aesthetics, but a political and cultural movement. The image of the well-dressed black man, often associated with sophistication, rebellion, and irony, has historically been used to break racist stereotypes, challenge power structures, and rewrite colonial narratives.

Structure and Approach

The book powerfully stitches together fashion, history, and black identity. The author outlines a timeline from slavery to the present day, showing how style has always been a means of expression and resistance. She highlights everything from enslaved men who wore elegant clothing to represent their masters — and later subverted that image — to the dandies of the Harlem Renaissance, who transformed fashion into a cry for freedom. In the contemporary era, figures like André 3000, Kanye West, and visual artists use aesthetics as a tool to question race, masculinity, and power.

Aesthetics as Resistance: The book demonstrates how fashion has — and still is — a powerful means of personal and collective affirmation among black people. Whether on the streets of Harlem or today’s runways, black style communicates pride, challenge, and belonging.

Breaking Colonial Narratives: Miller reveals how refined style challenges historical images of subalternity and submission. Refined tailoring, when worn by black bodies, ceases to be merely aesthetic — it becomes a message. It is a “here I am” with posture and intention, visually rewriting history.

The Politics of Appearance: She introduces the idea that clothing is not neutral, but carries layers of social and racial meanings. The author also invites us to look beyond the surface and understand that the visual realm is also a field of struggle.

A New Era of Celebration

Since the Costume Institute announced the theme, it was already clear: 2025 would be the game-changing year. The curation focused on the strength and elegance of black style as an aesthetic and political movement. “Superfine” refers to precise finishing, impeccable cuts, and artisanal excellence — but also to cultural expression rooted in the history of black people, from Africa to Harlem, from the salons of Soweto to the red carpets of Hollywood.

This is not just another gala night. It will be a parade of memory, presence, and power.

The Origin of Dandyism

Dandyism is more than style — it’s an attitude. A movement that emerged in the 19th century, but was appropriated, redefined, and elevated primarily by black men as a form of aesthetic, political, and cultural resistance.

The term dandy originated in 19th-century England, associated with men who dressed in extremely elegant attire, with tailored outfits, refined posture, and obsessive attention to detail. They were not of nobility, but used their appearance to stand out and compete for social space. Instead of status by birth, they sought respect through appearance. One of the most iconic names was Beau Brummell, a legendary figure of masculine style.

But dandyism was not just about clothing. It was about constructing oneself as a living work of art. The dandy became a figure who used the body as performance — a way to challenge norms and subvert gazes.

Black Dandyism: Style as Resistance

When black men began to embrace dandyism, especially in the Americas and Africa, it took on another layer of power. Because it was not just style — it was rebellion against dehumanization.

Les Sapeurs (Republic of Congo): A movement that began in the 20th century where men wear colorful suits, hats, luxurious shoes, and impeccable posture. Amid social and economic chaos, they use style as a form of dignity, identity, and resistance to colonialism.

The philosophy of SAPÊRIA “Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes” is clear: “Even without anything, style is everything.” This is protest in the form of tailoring.

Harlem Renaissance, zoot suits in the 1940s, and icons like Malcolm X, Miles Davis, and even today, with André 3000 or Tyler, the Creator, all have appropriated the dandy aesthetic to say: “I am black, elegant, intelligent, and uncontrollable.”

Dandyism Today as Living Heritage

Today, black dandyism remains more alive than ever. It is seen in high-end fashion campaigns, rap videos, red carpets, and the streets. It is the silent cry of those who understand that the body is political territory. And that dressing well, with intention, is also an act of confrontation. Names like Billy Porter, Steve Lacy, A$AP Rocky, Jidenna, and Labrinth are major references.

They are modern heirs of this lineage. They show that black tailoring is not just about elegance — it’s about subverting the gaze with posture, presence, and power.

To truly understand black dandyism, it is impossible to ignore the book “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity” by the author Aspórica. The work is a theoretical and aesthetic stone that reveals how the black body has always been monitored, shaped, and used as a showcase — and how, even so, it was able to transform pain into elegance, and oppression into style.

Aspórica points out that the black dandy does not emerge as a copy of the European model. It emerges as sabotage, as fine irony against the system. A black man, impeccably dressed, walking the streets with posture and confidence — in a world that insists on dehumanizing him — is not vanity. It is strategy. It is rupture.

The author unpacks the relationship between slavery, colonialism, and fashion. She shows how, for centuries, clothing was a tool of control — but also of rebellion. And that the West’s obsession with black aesthetics, while trying to exploit it, has never been able to contain it.

“Black style is performance, it is survival, it is constant reinvention.”

This is the tone of the book. And that is why it resonates so deeply with the theme “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” — because it’s impossible to talk about black tailoring without acknowledging that blackness has never been just about appearance. It has been about affirmation, about presence, about hacking the white gaze.

Tailoring as Armor and Affirmation

At the epicenter of this theme is tailoring, but not in the rigid European mold. The aim was to show how black fashion subverted, redefined, and elevated the suit to another level. Names like Dapper Dan, a living legend from Harlem who remixed luxury brands with street aesthetics in the 1980s, were evoked as foundations of this revolution.

Each stitch carried more than fabric: it carried experiences, protests, pride, and ancestry. Black tailoring is about wearing the suit as a shield. It’s about challenging the white dress code. It’s about dressing royalty in the body and revolution in the soul.

Culture, Representativity, and Legacy

The theme “Superfine” did not come just to impress. It came to educate. To remind us that every button, every cut, every fabric carries a code. That black style has shaped (and continues to shape) global aesthetics. And that the time has come to stop copying and start crediting.

Black fashion is not derivative. It is original. And the Met 2025 made sure to place this at the center of the world. The exhibition, which runs at The Met until the end of the year, showcases historical pieces, testimonials from black creators, sound and visual installations, and a timeline connecting African griots to Bronx tailors.

By inspiring the theme “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” the curation acknowledges that black fashion should not be seen merely as a trend or fetish, but as a rich, articulated, intellectual, and deeply critical history. Monica L. Miller's work supports this perspective with depth and academic rigor, expanding the understanding of the role of style in the African diaspora.

From a critical standpoint, the theme of the Met Gala 2025 — “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” — is profoundly relevant because it finally recognizes, in one of the largest showcases of global fashion, that black style is a form of discourse, not a passing trend.

We live in a moment when power structures are increasingly being questioned, even in fashion — a historically exclusionary system that appropriated black aesthetics without returning prominence, authorship, or credit. By placing black fashion at the center of the narrative, the Met not only celebrates creativity but also recognizes a history of silent, elegant, and strategically woven resistance in every suit, cut, color, or fabric.

Fashion is — and always has been — political. It communicates, performs, chooses sides. A well-dressed black man during slavery or the civil rights struggle was already an act of rebellion. Today, it is also affirmation, aesthetic intelligence, and mastery of visual language. It is not just about clothing, but about occupying space with identity and intention.

In a time of racial surveillance, xenophobia, and crises of representation, valuing black dandyism is to assert that black elegance is not disguise — it is a tool. It is not an exception — it is a legacy. And this public acknowledgment, on a stage like the Met, is also a summons: for fashion to finally return to black culture what has always belonged to it.