May 22, 2025
The Met Gala is the most dramatic fashion event, a red carpet spectacular with celebrities dressed in couture. But in 2025, the spectacle is set to become something more significant–Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.
The Costume Institute is launching its first menswear exhibition in more than two decades. This event spotlights a fashion category that usually ranks second behind womenswear.
The Institute is the organizer of the Met Gala and is part of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. It houses a large fashion collection and curates its annual exhibitions.
Menswear is rarely the focus of fashion.
This year’s event will not be a tour of tailoring. The event will reflect on the importance of clothing, especially for those who have been excluded from power.
The Costume Institute Benefit, or the Met Gala as it is officially known, is held every year at the Met and kicks off the major fashion show of the year.
The event began as a modest charity dinner in 1948 and has evolved to become the fashion world’s biggest spectacle. Red-carpet arrivals on the red carpet are judged by their outrageous outfits, not by taste.
The event is held every year to set the tone for the Met’s latest costume exhibition. Each theme sets the dress code of fashion’s most scrutinized stars.
Past editions have seen Chadwick Boseman turn up in Vatican-meets-Versace for Heavenly Bodies (2018), Harry Styles blend Edwardian tailoring with sheer lace for Camp: Notes on Fashion (2019), and Lil Nas X cycle through three outre costume changes for In America: A Lexicon of Fashion (2021). The event is a mix of gala and runway with avant-garde performances and art. It’s designed to generate headlines, memes and occasionally some meaning.
The 2025 theme explores Black dandyism, a centuries-old tradition in which Black men have used tailoring to not only look good but also to assert their identity. The exhibition explores how style has become a form of identity, protest and armour. It includes Frederick Douglass’s dignified suit and the work done by Dapper Dan at his Harlem atelier. The exhibition was inspired by Monica L. Miller’s 2009 book Slaves to Fashion.
Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, and Pharrell Willams cochair the evening, while LeBron James serves as honorary chair. Their presence underscores the theme’s importance, tying fashion, culture, and activism together.
Superfine is a lens that corrects the situation in a world of fashion where menswear, especially black menswear, is often overlooked.
It’s the most trendy statement in 2025.
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