By The Big Magazine Staff
The dress code for the 2025 Met Gala has been announced, and this year it pays tribute to 20 years of menswear.
In conjunction with the upcoming exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style," the annual event's dress code will ask attendees and designers to create outfits under the umbrella of "Tailored for You," as reported by Vogue on Tuesday.
The star-studded gala, and the exhibit it serves to promote, each raise money for the museum's Costume Institute. This year's presentation is "a cultural and historical examination of the Black dandy, from the figure’s emergence in Enlightenment Europe during the 18th century to today’s incarnations in cities around the world," the Met reports
Superfine is organized into 12 sections, each representing a characteristic that defines this style: Ownership, Presence, Distinction, Disguise, Freedom, Champion, Respectability, Jook, Heritage, Beauty, Cool, and Cosmopolitanism. Together, these characteristics demonstrate how the figure is defined and self-fashions and how their style raises notions of assimilation, distinction, and resistance—all while telling a story about self and society inflected by race, gender, class, and sexuality.
Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge, The Costume Institute, commented: “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style is our department’s first exhibition devoted to menswear in more than 20 years. The show also reflects our ongoing commitment to diversifying our exhibitions in a way that is authentic to The Costume Institute. What makes it possible to translate Monica’s book, Slaves to Fashion, into an exhibition is our collection of high-style menswear, which serves as a foundation for imagining and realizing this important sartorial history.”
Defined as "a man unduly devoted to style," the term became associated with Black men in 18th-century Europe as a trend of smartly dressed servant staff emerged. Once imposed, it has in the years since been reclaimed to express the evolution of an ever-sharpening, ever-influential, ever-appropriated Black style.
"Dandyism offered Black people an opportunity to use clothing, gesture, irony, and wit to transform their given identities and imagine new ways of embodying political and social possibilities," a release from the Met alongside the exhibit's announcement reads.
LeBron James will serve as honorary co-chair while Pharrell Williams, Colman Domingo, A$AP Rocky and Lewis Hamilton are also slated to be co-chairs of the event. The Met will revive the longstanding tradition of a Host Committee, comprising actors, artists, athletes, designers, filmmakers, musicians, and writers, that will support the evening’s festivities. The committee members are André 3000, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Simone Biles and Jonathan Owens, Grace Wales Bonner, Jordan Casteel, Dapper Dan, Doechii, Ayo Edebiri, Edward Enninful, Jeremy O. Harris, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Rashid Johnson, Regina King, Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee, Audra McDonald, Janelle Monáe, Jeremy Pope, Angel Reese, Sha'Carri Richardson, Olivier Rousteing, Tyla, USHER, and Kara Walker.
Major funding is provided by Instagram, the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, Africa Fashion International, founded by Dr. Precious Moloi-Motsepe, The Perry Foundation, and Condé Nast.
The Met Gala, which has been chaired by Anna Wintour since 1995, is set to return to The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 5.
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