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If you’ve ever walked down a Harlem block or past Fulton Street and thought, “Damn, that’s a look,” you already understand the heart of “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s razor-sharp spring exhibition that puts the precision, politics and poetry of Black menswear on full, unapologetic display.
Opening on May 10 in the Met’s Cantor Exhibition Hall, the program, linked to tonight's Met Gala ceremony, is more than a fashion retrospective: it’s a sensory experience that feels like stepping into someone’s memory, someone’s vision, someone’s mirror.
Curated by Monica L. Miller (author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity), alongside Andrew Bolton, the head curator of the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the museum, the show threads together over 250 years of style, swagger and statement-making, from 18th-century dandies to 2025 red carpet icons.
Let’s just say it: this is one of the Met’s coolest shows in years.
The title “Superfine” nods to both the luxurious superfine wool used in classic suiting and the feeling you get when you look good—really good. And, inside the space, it’s hard not to feel exactly that. The first thing you'll notice upon entering isn’t a mannequin or a text panel—it’s scale. Artist Torkwase Dyson’s towering black sculptural “hypershapes” dominate the gallery like abstract monuments, creating “architectural zones” that challenge how we move through fashion. You don’t just look at the garments, you enter their respective orbits.
Between Dyson’s structures, you’ll spot a top hat from 1855 next to a 2024 suit by Who Decides War; jockey silks across from Walt Frazier’s Puma-covered Jet spread; and a Ralph Lauren ensemble from the Morehouse-Spelman capsule resting feet from André Leon Talley’s own sharply tailored suit. It’s a remix of the past and present that feels deeply intentional and, somehow, deeply personal.
And then there are the heads. Sculptor Tanda Francis’s bespoke mannequin heads anchor the looks with regal, haunting presence. One echoes the face of Congolese revolutionary André Grenard Matswa, crowned in silhouetted profiles that evoke ancestry and legacy all at once.
The exhibition is divided into 12 thematic zones. Among them: "ownership," "disguise," "champion," "beauty" and "cool," for example.
In "disguise," we learn about Ellen and William Craft, the enslaved couple who dressed as a white man and his servant to escape to freedom. In "champion," 1970s track suits are shown alongside Olympic gear and magazine covers that cemented athletes like Walt Frazier and LeBron James as cultural tastemakers. In "beauty," designers like LaQuan Smith and Theophilio usher in a glam, gender-bending moment of sequins, lace and unflinching self-love.
These garments aren’t just fashion—they’re resistance, reinvention and reclamation. And while the show is centered on menswear, gender here is fluid, stylized and defiant. As Olympian Sha’Carri Richardson, a Met Gala host committee member, put it, “Our style isn’t just what we wear—it’s how we move, how we own our space.”
While an invite to the Met Gala tonight (theme: “Tailored for You,” a wink to the show’s suiting theme and an invitation for attendees to remix the rules), would be nice, you really don’t need a $75,000 table to feel the vibe. Walk the Met galleries and you’ll hear it for yourself: the rustle of silk, the shine of patent leather and the quiet power of pose.
In a city where the corner bodega is just as much a runway as the Met steps, the exhibit feels like a long-overdue tribute to the people who’ve made style a language of survival and joy. New York’s fashion scene owes much of its edge and elegance to Black style, and this show just gives it the Met’s highest platform.
"Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" is on view at The Met Fifth Avenue from May 10 through October 26.
