Met Gala 2025 celebrates Black men’s style: What to know about dandyism and its impact on fashion

For the first time, Black men’s style, elegance, and creativity take center stage at the Met Gala with the theme “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.

For the first time at the glamorous Met Gala in New York, Black men — their style, expression, elegance, creativity and versatility — will be on full display. 

Using as inspiration the 2009 bestselling book “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Disasporic Identity,” by Monica L. Miller, Monday night’s theme, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” opens the door for Black men to demonstrate their versatile and globally influential fashion sense on the red carpet during fashion’s big night. 

“Black style is really related to thinking about how fashion and power connect,” Miller said in a YouTube video about making Vogue’s Met Gala issue. “The way that people are styled or fashioned or fashioned themselves in response to the degree of agency that they feel.” 

Miller, who curated the Costume Institute’s spring exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is bringing Black dandyism into focus.   

While the dandy was an 18th century term for a man who is meticulously dressed and appreciates the finer things in life, these days dandyism inspires myriad definitions. The dozens of Black actors, athletes, entertainers and other celebrities in the Vogue video described dandyism as everything from “Black excellence” to “confidence” to “expression.”