The Metropolitan Museum of Art unveiled The Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, on view at The Met Fifth Avenue from May 10 through October 26, 2025 in New York City.
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style explores the importance of sartorial style to the formation of Black identities in the Atlantic diaspora. The show is inspired by Guest Curator Monica L. Miller’s 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, and chronicles the ways in which Black people have used dress and fashion to transform their identities and imagine new ways of embodying political and social possibilities.
The exhibition interprets the concept as both an aesthetic and a strategy, using garments, paintings, prints, photographs, decorative arts, literary texts, and film to explore this cultural and historical phenomenon from the 18th century to today.
Superfine is organized into 12 sections, each representing a characteristic that defines this style: Ownership, Presence, Distinction, Disguise, Freedom, Champion, Respectability, Jook, Heritage, Beauty, Cool, and Cosmopolitanism.
Together, these characteristics demonstrate how the figure is defined and self-fashions and how their style raises notions of assimilation, distinction, and resistance—all while telling a story about self and society inflected by race, gender, class, and sexuality.
Monica L. Miller, Guest Curator, and Chair of Africana Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University, said:
“Dandyism can seem frivolous, but it often poses a challenge to or a transcendence of social and cultural hierarchies. It asks questions about identity, representation, and mobility in relation to race, class, gender, sexuality, and power.
The exhibition explores this concept as both a pronouncement and a provocation. The exhibition title refers to ‘superfine’ not only as the quality of a particular fabric—’superfine wool’—but also as a particular attitude related to feeling especially good in one’s own body, in clothes that express the self. Wearing superfine and being superfine are, in many ways, the subject of this exhibition. And the separateness, distinction, and movement between these two states of ‘being’ in the African diaspora from the 1780s to today animates the show.”
Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge, The Costume Institute, commented:
“Superfine: Tailoring Black Style is our department’s first exhibition devoted to menswear in more than 20 years. The show also reflects our ongoing commitment to diversifying our exhibitions in a way that is authentic to The Costume Institute. What makes it possible to translate Monica’s book, Slaves to Fashion, into an exhibition is our collection of high-style menswear, which serves as a foundation for imagining and realizing this important sartorial history.”
The show’s conceptual framework is inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s 1934 essay Characteristics of Negro Expression. With the exception of “Jook,” each of the 12 characteristics in the exhibition were newly selected by Miller and The Costume Institute’s curatorial team. The first six sections comprise primarily historical objects, while the final six feature predominantly objects from the 20th century on.
Among the first six sections, Disguise examines an earlier characteristic of fashion—how it can be used to conceal and reveal, particularly for the enslaved, who understood that clothing and dress marked them as individuals.
This section shows how race, class, and gender cross-dressing enabled Black people to convey the ways in which identity is dependent on, and can be manipulated by, conventions of dress. Highlighted in this section are the stories of the formerly enslaved couple Ellen and William Craft, who fled from Georgia to Philadelphia in 1848, and prominent 20th-century entertainers Ralph Kerwinoe and Stormé De Lavarie, who each donned typical male attire as an expression of their nonconforming gender identities. Objects on view include an frontispiece from the Crafts’ 1860 memoir, a top hat dating from 1855, and a suit by Who Decides War from the fall/winter 2024–25 collection.
The Champion section explores the role of the “uniform” and how athletic dress can illuminate the history of discrimination and stereotypes of Black men in sports as well as the way in which athletic success for Black men can be a mode of distinction and a route to status as a style icon.
Objects in this section range from 19th-century jockey silks to a 1974 issue of Jet magazine featuring Walt Fraizer on the cover—one of the first Black athletes to have a major shoe deal, with Puma—and ensembles by Saul Nash and Denim Tears.
Respectability considers the politics of assimilation, activism, and propriety and the ways in which Black political and cultural leaders, such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Frederick Douglass, have long understood grooming and dress as tools of power and distinction.
Tailoring traditions were often passed down within Black families in the African diaspora; since the late 19th century, Black students could learn these techniques as part of their education at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), which have been essential to the creation of a progressive Black vanguard. Objects on view include pieces owned and worn by Douglass, photographs of Du Bois, a suit owned by André Leon Talley, and an ensemble from the 2022 Polo Ralph Lauren Exclusively for Morehouse and Spelman Colleges collection.
Another section, Beauty, inspired by a 1969 poem by Nikki Giovanni, highlights the beauty, confidence, and sheer fabulousness of style and attitudes that begin to emerge among Black males in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Following the seismic social justice movements of the 1960s, Black men converted their previous social invisibility into a form of radiance that relied on their hypervisibility, pride, and panache and allowed for an experimentation with norms of masculinity, gender identity, and sexuality. Rebuking stereotypes of Black masculinity as simply “strong” and “hard,” wardrobes began to feature leather and drapery, lace, ruffles, and sequins, emphasizing a mode of dress that spans the spectrum of gender as part of its transgressive power. Highlighting this section are contemporary ensembles by Marvin Desroc, Theophilio, and LaQuan Smith.
Cool examines the turn to stylized casual dress that revolutionized fashion from the 1960s to the 1980s, with Black designers and the wearers of their clothes at the center of redefining how people dress for work and play.
Cardigans, tracksuits, and denim, born out of a resistance to constraining formality, demonstrate the art of being unbothered and nimble—even in politics, where the Kariba suit replaced Western suiting as official, formal dress in Jamaica in the 1970s. This easeful form communicates “cool,” an undefinable concept that relies on the creation of a mood or an atmosphere in which fashion, accessories, pose, and gait come together to attract notice and desire. Exemplifying this nonchalant yet highly curated approach to self-presentation are pieces by Botter, Grace Wales Bonner, and Bianca Saunders.
Designers and brands whose work is featured in the exhibition include: Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton, Jacques Agbobly for Agbobly, Jawara Alleyne, Jeffrey Banks, Samuel Boakye for Kwasi Paul, Ozwald Boateng OBE for the House of Givenchy and Ozwald Boteng, Grace Wales Bonner for Wales Bonner, Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh for BOTTER, Ev Bravado and Téla D’Amore for Who Decides War, Pat Campano, Joe Casely-Hayford OBE for Casely-Hayford, Willy Chavarria, Telfar Clemens for TELFAR, Nicholas Daley, Maximilian Davis for the House of Ferragamo and Maximilian Davis, Daniel Day for Dapper Dan of Harlem, Delaune worn by Alexandre Dumas, Marvin Desroc, Foday Dumbuya for LABRUM London, Tremaine Emory for Denim Tears, John Galliano for the House of Dior worn by André Leon Talley, Jean Paul Gaultier worn by Grace Jones, Daniel Gayle and James Bosley for denzilpatrick, Kerby Jean-Raymond for Pyer Moss, Vaughn Terry Jelk for Louis & Vaughn worn by Prince, Ib Kamara for Off-White, Ervin Latimer for Latimmier, Raul Lopez for LUAR, Jerry Lorenzo for Fear of God, Saul Nash, Johnny Nelson for Johnny Nelson Jewelry, Kenneth Nicholson, Soull and Dynasty Ogun for L’ENCHANTEUR, Brick Owens and Dieter Grams for Bstroy, Ivy Ralph O.D., Andrew M. Ramroop OBE CMTT for Maurice Sedwell, Morty Sills worn by André Leon Talley, Martine Rose, Olivier Rousteing for Balmain, Ralph Lauren Corporation, Bianca Saunders, Skepta for Mains, LaQuan Smith, Emeric Tchatchoua for 3.PARADIS, Josué Thomas for Gallery Dept., Edvin Thompson for Theophilio, Patience Torlowe worn by André Leon Talley, Pharrell Williams for Louis Vuitton.
Credits
The exhibition is organized by Monica L. Miller, Guest Curator, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University, with The Costume Institute’s Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge; William DeGregorio, Associate Curator; and Amanda Garfinkel, Associate Curator; and with help from Kai Marcel, Research Assistant, The Costume Institute.
In addition, artist Torkwase Dyson created the conceptual design for the exhibition, which is realized in the galleries by The Met’s Design Department and SAT3 Studio. Artist Tanda Francis designed the two bespoke sculpted mannequin heads used throughout the galleries. Artist Iké Udé served as Special Consultant.
Miller and The Costume Institute’s curatorial team consulted with an advisory committee of scholars who provided feedback on the exhibition. The committee members are Dr. Christine Checinska, Jason Cyrus, Thelma Golden, Deborah Tulani Salahu-Din, Dr. Jonathan Michael Square, and, from The Met, Dr. Denise Murrell, Merryl H. and James S. Tisch Curator at Large.
The exhibition and benefit are made possible by Louis Vuitton.
Major funding is provided by Instagram, the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, Africa Fashion International, founded by Dr. Precious Moloi-Motsepe, and The Perry Foundation.
Additional support is provided by Condé Nast.
In addition to this year’s Met Gala co-chairs—Colman Domingo, Sir Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, and Anna Wintour, and honorary chair LeBron James—The Met will revive the longstanding tradition of a Host Committee, comprising actors, artists, athletes, designers, filmmakers, musicians, and writers, that will support the evening’s festivities.
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style is on view through October 26, 2025 at the The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, located at 1000 5th Avenue in New York City.
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