For its spring 2025 exhibition, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute gave itself a monumental challenge: to use fashion as a means of exploring the complexities and contradictions of Black life. More specifically, to use the expressive style known as dandyism to explore the nuances of Black masculinity.
The show, called Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, which opens on 10 May, attempts to do just that – and mostly succeeds. It was inspired, in part, by the death of Vogue’s beloved fashion editor André Leon Talley in January 2022. Talley was known in the industry for his larger-than-life personality and penchant for flamboyant luxury ensembles (capes! Louis Vuitton tennis racquets!), a combination which helped him become Vogue’s first Black creative director. In many ways, he is the very manifestation of Black dandyism, which the show describes as a person who, “studies above everything else to dress elegantly and fashionably”.
