Superfine: Tailoring Black Style – The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Costume Institute’s 2025 Spring Exhibition presents a cultural and historical examination of the black dandy, from the character’s emergence in 18th-century Enlightenment Europe to present-day incarnations in cities around the world.

Inspired by guest curator Monica L. Miller’s 2009 book Slaves of Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Shaping of Black Diasporic IdentityThe exhibition examines the importance of fashion style in the formation of black identities in the Atlantic diaspora. The term is historical dandy was used to describe someone – often a man – who is extremely dedicated to style and views it as a discipline. Dandyism was first forced on black men in 18th-century Europe, as the Atlantic slave trade and an emerging consumer culture created a trend for fashionably dressed or dandy-dressed servants. Dandyism offered black people the opportunity to use clothing, gesture, irony, and wit to transform their given identities and imagine new ways of embodying political and social possibilities.

The exhibition tells the story of the black dandy over time through a range of media including clothing and accessories, drawings and prints, as well as paintings, photographs, film clips and more. Taken together, these narratives provide a history and description of black dandyism as a distinct phenomenon that reflects broader questions of power and race in the black diaspora.

The exhibition is made possible by

Major funding is provided by Instagram, the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, Dr. Precious Moloi-Motsepe and Africa Fashion International as well as the Perry Foundation.

You can get additional support from

#SuperfineStyle