On a rainy first monday in May, The Costume Institute rolled out the flower-speckled midnight blue carpet to celebrate its newest exhibition - Superfine : Tailoring Black Style. Drawing designers, stars, and tycoons into the Metropolitan Museum, fashion’s biggest night celebrated black excellence in both design and history. Alongside Andrew Bolton, Monica L. Miller, the pen behind Slaves to Fashion : Black Dandyism and Styling of Black Diasporic Identity curated the exhibit. 

The theme focused on dandyism, as both a tool for survival and expression. Fashion is an outer projection or protection of the self. Acknowledging its link to institutions, social class, power, stature, and war helps to understand its relationships with the black community. The black dandy materialized to combat and provoke the expectation of being lesser, as assumed through the extension of the dress. Reclaiming codes associated with wealth, the dandy aims to outstyle the provoker and showcase their worth through the symbols of refinement and stature they are held to. Through tailoring and meticulous design, the dandy in all forms is a dynamic mode that forwards self-actualization. Historically, it allowed for resilience, transformation, and transcendence within the black community. 

It continues to do so today through modern figures who inspire excellence and creation. At its core, dandyism is sartorial experimentation. Harnessing the lens of one who refuses to fit into a mold, it does so by taking the mold to an extreme. Hyperbolic, the dandy persona lives at the striking intersection between individualism, clothing, culture, and imagination. Whether defined as the etymological root as an 18th-century label for the obsessive male dresser or shoppers at Dapper Dan’s in Harlem, the mythos of the dandy come to fruition in various facets of black style throughout history. 

The 2025 Met Gala marked a significant turn by choosing to celebrate menswear particularly, with suiting, headwear, brooches, canes, and tailoring as common denominators. A highlight of this year’s event was the celebration of black designers including Wales Bonner, Maxwell Osborn, Christopher John Rogers, Thebe Magugu, Ruth E. Carter, Bianca Saunders, Pharell for Louis Vuitton, Paul Tazewell, and more. The work of legendary stylists such as Law Roach, Solange Franklin Reed, Mickey Freeman, and Chaise Dennis was also on display.

This year, Anna Wintour and Vogue published four covers for their May edition to accompany. Each issue features a modern black dandy cover star (Pharell, A$AP Rocky, Lewis Hamilton, and Coleman Domingo). This selected quad served as co-chairs of this year’s event. The “Tailored to You” dress code emphasized menswear and custom tailoring. The theme provided ample room for reinterpretation. However, dandyism is no small effort. The easiest task is to dress the part. But to truly embody dandyism, one has to find that internally - à la the late André Leon Talley, whose passing was a major catalyst for the exhibition’s creation. While there was a slight famine of beauty (André we love you), here are some looks that stood out to me as superfine, down to every last stitch.