The get together of the yr had the potential to be a political firecracker. New York’s final see-and-be-seen occasion, the Met Gala, was additionally the launch of Superfine: Tailoring Black Model, a style exhibition on the Metropolitan Museum honouring the subversive energy of black type and the function of dandyism in increasing beliefs of masculinity. In different phrases, the A-list have been exhibiting as much as elevate a toast to range beneath the watchful eye of an administration bent on reversing it.
On the evening, the resistance got here to get together, to not protest. Glamour was the visitor of honour, with politics very a lot the plus-one. The tempered tone of the evening was typified by Kamala Harris, essentially the most high-profile political visitor, slipping in a aspect entrance to keep away from the photographers. The evening was a joyful and considerate celebration of black heritage and creativity, however it was not a forthright assertion about politics in 2025.
Diana Ross wore a feathered ivory robe with the names of all her kids and grandchildren embroidered on to an 18ft practice, which took up many of the museum steps. Andre 3000 wore a grand piano on his again. Rihanna introduced her third being pregnant in pinstripe bump and matching bustle. Hailey Bieber accessorised her Saint Laurent tuxedo with a martini, and no trousers. However the evening didn’t attain the controversial heights of Kim Kardashian in Marilyn Monroe’s gown, or Rihanna because the pope – not to mention the boldness of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2021 “Tax The Wealthy” gown.
Homages to André Leon Talley, Josephine Baker and Dapper Dan have been recurring themes. It was the demise two years in the past of Talley, style editor of American Vogue and iconic black dandy, which first sparked the concept for this exhibition in curator Andrew Bolton. Talley “radiated pleasure”, Anna Wintour wrote in a current tribute. Talley’s fingerprints have been all around the crimson carpet, in Colman Domingo’s electrical blue cape, a nod to Talley’s 2011 Met Gala look, and in singer Doechii staging a pre-gala picture op swinging considered one of his trademark equipment, a Louis Vuitton tennis racket cowl.
The style headline of the evening was a revival of the subtle glamour of Twenties and Nineteen Thirties Harlem. Singer FKA twigs wore a scalloped and feather trimmed Baker-esque cocktail gown with a chiffon stole, made for her by the black British designer Grace Wales Bonner. Zendaya wore an immaculate three-piece ivory “zoot go well with”, the ultra-fitted silhouette in style in Harlem dancehalls in that period, which recalled the flamboyant tailoring of queer blues singer Gladys Bentley.
Dapper Dan, iconic 80-year-old tailor and godfather to hip-hop style, instructed crimson carpet reporters that his jazzy black-and-white tailoring, with matching two-tone hat and footwear “personifies the Harlem Renaissance”. Jazz-age fashions, which have been percolating on the moodboards of New York creatives because the Met’s 2024 present The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism, appears to be essentially the most influential style route to emerge from the gala.
after e-newsletter promotion
Most putting among the many Harlem Renaissance tributes was the return of the kiss curl. The slick, lacquered single loop of hair popularised by Baker a century in the past was worn on the crimson carpet by celebrities from throughout the board: singer Dua Lipa, actor Sydney Sweeney, gymnast Simone Biles, basketball participant Angel Reese and rapper Unhealthy Bunny.
For white company, there have been anxieties round how greatest to honour black tradition with out risking accusations of appropriation. Gigi Hadid wore a gold Miu Miu gown that paid tribute to the work of black designer Zelda Wynn Valdes, who made robes for Ella Fitzgerald and created the unique Playboy Bunny waitress costume. Kendall Jenner wore a gray tailor-made two-piece, with a wrapped waist tied on the again in a mode impressed by Nigerian tailoring traditions, which designer Torisheju Dumi mentioned expressed “the flexibility of black dandyism and what it means to a black British girl.”
The interpretations of the gown code, “Tailor-made for You”, was a reminder of how fluid males’s and ladies’s style has develop into. Males wore capes and skirts and brooches; ladies wore trousersuits and waistcoats. Walton Goggins, using the crest of White Lotus mania, twirled for the cameras in his deconstructed Thom Browne coat and matching flared skirt. Zendaya’s three-piece trousersuit was made for her by Pharrell Williams, who designs menswear, not womenswear, for Louis Vuitton.
