Although the Black dandy has a long history that includes clothing of exceptional tailoring and extravagant accessories, as well as personal and political symbolism, let’s ground ourselves in the glory of the present-day dandies. If you’ve admired Russell Westbrook in his tunnel fits and Billy Porter at awards shows, you have appreciated a Black dandy. Of course, dandies don’t have to be Black or male. Consider, for example, Travis Kelce and Janelle Monae, both of whom startle the broader world with their fashion statements.
To celebrate this new world of menswear and style, the 2025 Met Gala’s theme is Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. Based on Monica Miller’s 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, the exhibit and wildly fashionable party will feature celebrities honoring not just groundbreaking clothing, but expert sewing and tailoring as well. Finally, many people believe, the museum has caught up with the real world of men as fashion plates—and Black men as fashion leaders and creators.
To prioritize the theme’s importance, LeBron James is the honorary chair of the 2025 Gala, with Colman Domingo (above, at the 2024 Met Gala), Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, and Pharrell Williams as co-chairs. The exhibit will feature 12 aspects of dandy style: ownership, presence, distinction, disguise, freedom, champion, respectability, jook, heritage, beauty, cool, and cosmopolitanism.
No previous theme has so perfectly suited the atmosphere of sartorial splendor that is fashion’s most important night of the year. Dandies, in their fashion choices, break the rules of the past and present while showing the way to the future.
Think of Colman Domingo and Lewis Hamilton at the 2024 Met Gala: Domingo paired wide-legged pants with a cape and carried a bouquet of lilies. Hamilton wore a wool coat with floral embroidery over a double-breasted suit and black boots.
According to Miller, these outfits signify many things, but the predominant message is: “You can’t control me.”
Black men in bold, stylish clothes remind the world that, throughout history, Black people have always been creating the materials and clothes worn by others. Whether they worked in fields or as seamstresses, in laundries or as dressers, Black people were hidden from the public joy of expensive clothing.
The Black Dandy makes the invisible person visible.
The First Dandies
While you may imagine that non-Scottish men wearing skirts to formal events is a purely 21st-century phenomenon, in her book, Miller brings the reader back to late 17th-century England. A once enslaved man named Julius Soubise became part of London’s upper classes and wore shoes with red heels and diamond buckles.
In fact, the title of the exhibition “Superfine” comes from the memoir of Olaudah Equiano, a Black man who purchased his freedom and wrote, in 1766, that he spent “above eight pounds of my money for a suit of superfine clothes to dance with at my freedom.”
A few years later, a white man, Beau Brummell, in Regency England, became the first official dandy, making fashion his life’s work. Until recently, the image of Beau Brummell typified the dandy. The first use of the word dandy to describe a man was in 1780, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and yes, Yankee Doodle Dandy did describe a fashion aesthetic. Remember, he “stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni”? (NB: The macaronis were fashionable men who wore bright colors and fanciful accessories, albeit not pasta.)
Meanwhile, and for some years later, the wealthiest enslavers began to provide enslaved men who did household and livery work with formal, well-made suits. Of course, most enslaved people were provided with no more than muslin and cotton clothes. At the same time, though, they became skilled pattern makers, seamstresses, and embroiderers, and while they couldn’t wear the clothes they made, once freed, they could use those skills to create fine, highly-styled outfits.
The Early 20th Century Dandy
From the Reconstruction Era through the 1940s, clothes became a political statement for people of color and women in the United States. Women, of course, began to wear pants and dresses with much shorter hemlines, necklines, and sleeves. Their clothes allowed them to move freely and didn’t harm their health by constricting their breathing. Marlene Dietrich was the ideal of this newly empowered woman, wearing trousers and tuxedos in many of her films and portraits. Today, we see that same imagery in the look of many more global celebrities, such as the K-Pop fashion iconoclast G-Dragon.
During this time, men also used clothing to articulate their freedom. With its excessive use of fabric (oversized shoulders, wide lapels), the zoot suit was a visual representation of feeling big and powerful. Worn by Latin men, their effect was so influential that it threatened the white men of Southern California, leading to riots in June 1943.
On the East Coast, the men of the Harlem Renaissance wore brightly colored wool and silk suits. Their hats, typically fedoras, often matched their suspenders, which were more elegant and formal than belts.
The 1970s Dandy
After the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers, and others who wore formal clothing and short hair, Black men began to embrace a more dramatic, stylized appearance, no longer using clothes to appear safe to a white onlooker. Larger natural hair, open shirts, and tighter pants, the dandy became more extravagant and sexual. Men in long fur coats and large hats rejected the clothing they were supposed to wear to “fit in” as a way to make a statement about their power.
Today’s Dandies
Over the last few years, athletes, musicians, filmmakers, and others have displayed their confidence and rejection of gender norms by showing up in traditional women’s clothing and beauty standards. From the tunnel fit to men in nail polish and makeup to a love of over-the-top jewelry, men who are most at home in their bodies seem to relish bringing attention not to their physical strength but to their beauty—as well as to the beauty of fashion.
The dandy’s wardrobe does not have to be expensive and, despite the many Black designers whose work will be worn on the Gala’s carpet (which isn’t always red), is not always formalwear. In fact, one of the most unexpected aspects of the new rise of the Black Dandy is the “sweatshirt dandy.” That is, a man who is still dressed up even in the least fancy clothes available.
The 2025 Met Gala
The dress code for this year’s big event is not “dress like a Black Dandy,” but instead, is “tailored for you.” Although everyone who exits a limousine and walks into the museum through flashing lights and fashion fans will all be wearing haute couture, it is handmade clothes, such as Dolly Parton’s coat of many colors made by her mother, that the exhibit esteems—entirely personal, and an achievement of the skills behind the beauty of the fashion.
The point is to know the joy of having clothing made specifically for you and your sense of style, body, and statement to the world: an outfit that fits and outs your style, power, and politics.
Since 2010, Donna Raskin, a longtime writer and editor, has taught history classes at the College of New Jersey. As a child, she read and re-read every book in the Childhood of Famous Americans series. As an adult, she collects fashion history books and has traveled to Paris on a fashion history tour. In addition to contributing to Biography.com, she is the senior health and fitness editor at Bicycling and Runner’s World.
