Tailoring Black Style’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

While thousands milled around the Metropolitan Museum of Art Sunday afternoon and thousands more outside of the museum’s walls are discussing what defines dandyism, the Costume Institute’s spring show “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” is unquestionably beautiful and complicated.

Perhaps no one was more eager to see its realization than guest curator Monica L. Miller, whose 2009 book “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of the Black Diasporic Identity,” inspired the show. During a preview Sunday, Miller said she had never imagined that the show would spark such a global conversation.

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“It’s a vessel — an unexpected lesson in history, where you can look at fashion and understand the power of fashion over time and geography. With the way that everyone is talking about it, it’s also a container for those histories, but also people’s imaginative and creative response,” she said.

Spanning about 250 years, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” explores menswear through Black culture and identity with a good dose of the current street trends and hip-hop’s influence, as well as such pivotal periods as the Harlem Renaissance, and the civil rights movement. There is also much to consider looking further back into our country’s troubled past related to the imposed uniforms for servants and enslaved people, including two examples that are featured at the start. Visitors will walk through 12 sections — Ownership, Presence, Distinction, Disguise, Freedom, Champion, Respectability, Jook, Heritage, Beauty, Cool and Cosmopolitanism. They are meant to be defining but not definitive, Miller said.

The layout, which includes glass-encased garments, prompts gallery goers to look closer, as well as upward and outward, prompting a certain transcendence. The “Superfine” name borrows from the 1789 autobiography of the enslaved Olaudah Equiano, who wrote of laying out eight pounds of his money “for a suit of superfine clothes to dance with at his freedom.”

Miller said, “I’m giving you 12 different scenarios to think about the power of fashion in the largest terms, and in particular its power in relation to race. But there are so many other ways that you can take any one of these themes and topics and blow it out in a different direction to think much more comprehensively than we’ve been able to do here. That’s exciting to me because I don’t know what people are going to do. Younger people in particular are really ready, so go. ‘Go’ is what I want to say.”

The exhibition also features looks from about 40 contemporary Black designers including Grace Wales Bonner, Ozwald Boateng, Labrum London, Botter, Telfar, Dapper Dan, Jeffrey Banks, Luar, Willy Chavarria, Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing, Fear of God, Jawara Alleyne, Ervin Latimer, Bianca Saunders, Jacques Agbobly, and Off-White’s Ib Kamara, among others. Multiple garments on view are from the past five years or so. There is also a good smattering of creations from Louis Vuitton, which is the show’s lead sponsor and where Virgil Abloh served as creative director of men’s collections and was succeeded by Pharrell Williams.

“You should be able to come through here and be really excited by contemporary Black fashion,” Miller said.

A$AP Rocky, Lewis Hamilton and Louis Vuitton’s Williams, who understand the might of self-fashioning and are among the cohosts of Monday night’s Met Gala, will help to take the current interest in the show next level. To keep the pop culture conversation going, “Superfine,” which opens to the public on Saturday and runs through Oct. 26, will be on view for eight weeks longer than any previous Costume Institute exhibition.

At the entrance to “Superfine,” the wall text defines a dandy as “someone who studies above everything else to dress elegantly and fashionably.” During Sunday’s preview, Miller, who collaborated with Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s curator in charge, spoke about the importance of dandyism to Black identity in the diaspora and the ways that Black designers have interpreted and envisioned that history.

“Museums are often in the business of telling history through objects. One of the things that people will learn in this exhibition is that you can learn really signal moments in Black history by thinking about it and looking at it through the lens of fashion and dress,” Miller said.

“We’re also looking at things dialectically — what it means to be fashionable, when somebody imposes a perspective or idea on you, and what that means to fashion and how those two things have related over time and different geographies. I hope that people will be able to see how they’ve managed that dialectic even if they are not Black. But there are also very moments in here that will feel not only familiar but familial to people, like a strategy around fashion that their grandfather” may have adopted.

Referring to the Cosmopolitanism section, for example, Miller noted how designers had referenced how their families really dressed up for their first flights.

“It was really a class journey to be able to afford air travel,” she said.

The tensions tied to dandyism — such as when a dandy is racialized, or when a Black person uses dandyism as a tool — are also analyzed.

Dandyism dates back to the 18th century, when it was imposed on Black servants who were used as figures of conspicuous consumption with fine textiles being used as form of currency and a means of exchange. A Brroks Brothers livery coat 1856-64 that was worn by an enslaved boy before the Civil War is one example of that. Deeper into the show there is a record of W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1925 receipt for two Brooks Brothers suits.

Knowing that some Met goers will spend a few hours in the galleries and others will skate through, Miller shared some of her must-see items, starting with the livery suits. A navy wool coat with an appliquéd braid of gold silk from John Galliano’s 2000-01 haute couture Dior collection that was worn by the former Vogue journalist André Leon Talley and two spring 2023 black wool “Body Stitch” suits by Off-White’s Kamara that challenge gender norm with male anatomy stitched on one and female anatomy stitched on another are also must-sees, Miller said.

“Sometimes dandyism can be used for survival,” Miller said in the Disguise section, noting how some enslaved people dressed above their station in life to escape and then later sold their clothes to have money to live on.

In the Freedom area, Miller stopped before a wall of portraits from the 1800s — including William Whipper, Abraham Hanson and Thomas Howland — to highlight the significance of their attire, expressions, jewelry and adornments. A few feet away in Respectability is an homage to the American abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass — clothing, a cane, a top hat, a comb, non-prescription sunglasses and a pocket watch. Miller noted how the latter symbolized how as a free person Douglass had control over his own time.

A jockey’s jacket of red silk satin with individually handstitched stripes of green silk satin and white buckskin breeches from 1830-50 is another one of Miller’s essentials to see. She noted how the colors worn by the enslaved jockeys signaled the status and property of their owners, as well as the household’s livery.

A 1987 Dapper Dan ensemble that repurposed Louis Vuitton logo leather indicated how the designer brought luxury labels to the people, Miller said. The musician known as Prince’s white ruffled shirt from Vaughn Terry Jelks from his 1984 “Purple Rain” tour and a Pat Campano jacket worn by “Disco Queen” Sylvester James are expected to be of interest. Miller also highlighted a quartet of designs by Pyer Moss’ Kerby Jean-Raymond, including a red outfit with guitar-shaped piping from the designer’s final collection that focused on the singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe and her significance in rock ‘n’ roll.

Standing near a white Western suit with a swath of monogrammed Kente cloth that Abloh created for Louis Vuitton, Miller mentioned how the design, which referenced his Ghanian heritage, may get a good amount of attention. Drawn as many may be to contemporary designers, there are also Zoot suits that are not to be missed — a 1943 navy wool twill one and a 1940-45 green wool check one from Progress Tailoring Co. are on view.

“In his autobiography, Malcolm X talks about being obsessed with the Lindy Hop at The Savoy. So when he bought his first Zoot suit, he couldn’t wait to get it out on the dance floor,” Miller said.

The fact that Zoot suits were created at a time of rationing led to the “Zoot Suit Riots,” after some American servicemen got into a fracas with some Zoot-suited Jooks, Miller said. That illustrates how some of Black fashion and style means one thing to people inside of the community and something else to people outside. It may be part of community building, but also provocatively different for people outside of the community.

“That’s another conversation that’s happening in the exhibition,” Miller said.

The Met Previews ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ [PHOTOS]

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Launch Gallery: The Met Previews ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ [PHOTOS]

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