The Met Unveils New Details for the 2025 Met Gala® and The Costume Institute’s Spring Exhibition

Superfine: Tailoring Black Style explores the importance of sartorial style to the formation of Black identities

Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, and Anna Wintour will co-chair The Met Gala® on May 5, 2025; LeBron James will serve as honorary chair

The Host Committee will feature figures from the worlds of art, culture, fashion, film, music, and sports

Gala dress code is “Tailored for You,” a nod to the exhibition’s focus on suiting and menswear

Exhibition Dates: May 10–October 26, 2025
Member Previews: May 6, 8, and 9, 2025
Exhibition Location: The Met Fifth Avenue, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall, Gallery 999, Floor 2

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today new details for this year’s Met Gala® and The Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, on view at The Met Fifth Avenue from May 10 through October 26, 2025.

The exhibition and benefit are made possible by Louis Vuitton.

Major funding is provided by Instagram, the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, Africa Fashion International, founded by Dr. Precious Moloi-Motsepe, and The Perry Foundation.

Additional support is provided by Condé Nast.

In addition to this year’s Met Gala co-chairs—Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, and Anna Wintour, and honorary chair LeBron James—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.

Chef Kwame Onwuachi will create The Met Gala menu and artist Cy Gavin will provide the creative direction for the red carpet design, with other décor concepts led by Derek McLane and Raúl Àvila.

“Every year, The Met Gala brings together cultural figures and style icons from across a wide array of fields to celebrate and support art and fashion" said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. "This spring’s event will mark the opening of the exhibition Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, a profoundly scholarly show centering an important legacy of Black-led sartorial innovation and creative expression that continues to inspire and shape our world today.”

Sha’Carri Richardson remarked: “I’m beyond excited to stand with my fellow Host Committee members in supporting The Met and this year’s spring Costume Institute exhibition, celebrating the undeniable impact of Black creativity on fashion and culture for centuries. Our style isn’t just what we wear—it’s how we move, how we own our space, how we tell our story without saying a word. Fashion sets us apart, but it also brings us together—whether you’re shining on the track, commanding the stage, or just making the streets of New York your runway. On May 5, our light will continue shining on the power of style, and trust me, you don’t wanna miss it.”

USHER commented: “I’m honored to be part of such a long-standing tradition with The Met. The theme this year is not only timely but also speaks to our rich culture that should always be widely celebrated.”

Kwame Onwuachi added: “I am thrilled and honored to be creating the dining experience for this year’s Met Gala. As a chef who grew up in the Bronx, being a part of such an iconic New York institution for the most celebrated, star-studded night of the year is like a professional dream come true. And as a lover of high fashion, collaborating on the theme, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, brings a whole new level of inspiration for me and my team to work with.”

The dress code for the evening is “Tailored for You,” a nod to the exhibition’s focus on suiting and menswear—from specific silhouettes to various fabrics and accessories—that is purposefully designed to both provide guidance and invite creative interpretation. Each year the dress code takes inspiration from the exhibition theme and references ideas explored in the show. The Costume Institute Benefit (also known as The Met Gala®) takes place annually on the first Monday in May and provides the department with its primary source of annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, operations, and capital improvements.

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About Superfine: Tailoring Black Style
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style presents a cultural and historical examination of Black style from the 18th century to the present through an exploration of the concept of dandyism. To bring this rich subject to life, various artists have contributed to the exhibition through concepts that amplify topics explored in the curation. In her first-ever exhibition design, artist Torkwase Dyson uses her signature “hypershapes” to create a series of stand-alone monumental sculptures, or “architectural zones,” designed to hold questions around Black life—related to reflection, theatricality, scale, liberation, flight, and transcendence—and amplify moments of tension between motion, scale, and display in visitors’ experience. The two bespoke mannequin heads on display are by artist Tanda Francis and emulate bronze monuments. One of the works features numerous silhouetted profiles meant to represent a plurality of individuals and community as well as a visualization of the unseen: emerging from a central point is a face inspired by André Grenard Matswa of the Congo, the imaginative revolutionary who is considered the first Sapeur in that vibrant community that arose in the 1920s. Francis created this portrait within the theme of “protective styles” as a tribute to the unifying experience of function, style, and culture within the African diaspora. Artist and Special Consultant Iké Udé lends his unique expertise and experience as a dandy to curate a section of the exhibition that explores his own work and highlights Julius Soubise, whose style and behavior challenged societal norms in 18th-century London. Artist Tyler Mitchell’s images for the exhibition catalogue include a selection of dynamic object photography as well as a photo essay that portrays the camaraderie among well-styled Black men across generations. The catalogue also includes more than 30 essays by various thought leaders, artists, and other distinguished voices.

Programming
The Met will host a series of exhibition-related programs and public events for all ages, both at the Museum and at other institutions, prior to the May opening, including a talk at The Apollo Stages at The Victoria Theater on Tuesday, April 8 from 6 – 7pm; and another at The Billie Holiday Theater at Bed-Stuy Restoration Corporation on Tuesday, April 22 from 6:30pm – 7:30pm. Additional programs will include walking tours; interdisciplinary panel discussions exploring various themes in the exhibition; hands-on workshops and demonstrations exploring process, materials, and styling; a design competition for college students, and more. In the Museum’s fourth collaboration with Metrograph, the independent New York movie theater will present a film series inspired by the exhibition later this fall. Further details on events and programming will be released in the coming weeks.

Exhibition Overview
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style explores the importance of sartorial style to the formation of Black identities in the Atlantic diaspora. The show is inspired by Guest Curator Monica L. Miller’s 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, and chronicles the ways in which Black people have used dress and fashion to transform their identities and imagine new ways of embodying political and social possibilities. The exhibition interprets the concept as both an aesthetic and a strategy, using garments, paintings, prints, photographs, decorative arts, literary texts, and film to explore this cultural and historical phenomenon from the 18th century to today.

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.

Monica L. Miller, Guest Curator, and Chair of Africana Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University, said: “Dandyism can seem frivolous, but it often poses a challenge to or a transcendence of social and cultural hierarchies. It asks questions about identity, representation, and mobility in relation to race, class, gender, sexuality, and power. The exhibition explores this concept as both a pronouncement and a provocation. The exhibition title refers to ‘superfine’ not only as the quality of a particular fabric—’superfine wool’—but also as a particular attitude related to feeling especially good in one’s own body, in clothes that express the self. Wearing superfine and being superfine are, in many ways, the subject of this exhibition. And the separateness, distinction, and movement between these two states of ‘being’ in the African diaspora from the 1780s to today animates the show.”

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.”

The show’s conceptual framework is inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s 1934 essay Characteristics of Negro Expression. With the exception of “Jook,” each of the 12 characteristics in the exhibition were newly selected by Miller and The Costume Institute’s curatorial team. The first six sections comprise primarily historical objects, while the final six feature predominantly objects from the 20th century on.

Among the first six sections, Disguise examines an earlier characteristic of fashion—how it can be used to conceal and reveal, particularly for the enslaved, who understood that clothing and dress marked them as individuals. This section shows how race, class, and gender cross-dressing enabled Black people to convey the ways in which identity is dependent on, and can be manipulated by, conventions of dress. Highlighted in this section are the stories of the formerly enslaved couple Ellen and William Craft, who fled from Georgia to Philadelphia in 1848, and prominent 20th-century entertainers Ralph Kerwinoe and Stormé De Lavarie, who each donned typical male attire as an expression of their nonconforming gender identities. Objects on view include an frontispiece from the Crafts’ 1860 memoir, a top hat dating from 1855, and a suit by Who Decides War from the fall/winter 2024–25 collection.

The Champion section explores the role of the “uniform” and how athletic dress can illuminate the history of discrimination and stereotypes of Black men in sports as well as the way in which athletic success for Black men can be a mode of distinction and a route to status as a style icon.

Objects in this section range from 19th-century jockey silks to a 1974 issue of Jet magazine featuring Walt Fraizer on the cover—one of the first Black athletes to have a major shoe deal, with Puma—and ensembles by Saul Nash and Denim Tears.

Respectability considers the politics of assimilation, activism, and propriety and the ways in which Black political and cultural leaders, such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Frederick Douglass, have long understood grooming and dress as tools of power and distinction. Tailoring traditions were often passed down within Black families in the African diaspora; since the late 19th century, Black students could learn these techniques as part of their education at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), which have been essential to the creation of a progressive Black vanguard. Objects on view include pieces owned and worn by Douglass, photographs of Du Bois, a suit owned by André Leon Talley, and an ensemble from the 2023 collaboration between Morehouse College and James M. Jeter, Creative Director for Ralph Lauren.

Another section, Beauty, inspired by a 1969 poem by Nikki Giovanni, highlights the beauty, confidence, and sheer fabulousness of style and attitudes that begin to emerge among Black males in the 1970s and ‘80s. Following the seismic social justice movements of the 1960s, Black men converted their previous social invisibility into a form of radiance that relied on their hypervisibility, pride, and panache and allowed for an experimentation with norms of masculinity, gender identity, and sexuality. Rebuking stereotypes of Black masculinity as simply “strong” and “hard,” wardrobes began to feature leather and drapery, lace, ruffles, and sequins, emphasizing a mode of dress that spans the spectrum of gender as part of its transgressive power. Highlighting this section are contemporary ensembles by Marvin Desroc, Theophilio, and LaQuan Smith.

Cool examines the turn to stylized casual dress that revolutionized fashion from the 1960s to the 1980s, with Black designers and the wearers of their clothes at the center of redefining how people dress for work and play. Cardigans, tracksuits, and denim, born out of a resistance to constraining formality, demonstrate the art of being unbothered and nimble—even in politics, where the Kariba suit replaced Western suiting as official, formal dress in Jamaica in the 1970s. This easeful form communicates “cool,” an undefinable concept that relies on the creation of a mood or an atmosphere in which fashion, accessories, pose, and gait come together to attract notice and desire. Exemplifying this nonchalant yet highly curated approach to self-presentation are pieces by Botter, Grace Wales Bonner, and Bianca Saunders.

Credits
The exhibition is organized by Monica L. Miller, Guest Curator, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University, with The Costume Institute’s Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge; William DeGregorio, Associate Curator; and Amanda Garfinkel, Associate Curator; and with help from Kai Marcel, Research Assistant, The Costume Institute.

In addition, artist Torkwase Dyson created the conceptual design for the exhibition, which is realized in the galleries by The Met’s Design Department and SAT3 Studio. Artist Tanda Francis designed the two bespoke sculpted mannequin heads used throughout the galleries. Artist Iké Udé served as Special Consultant.

Miller and The Costume Institute’s curatorial team consulted with an advisory committee of scholars who provided feedback on the exhibition. The committee members are Dr. Christine Checinska, Jason Cyrus, Thelma Golden, Deborah Tulani Salahu-Din, Dr. Jonathan Michael Square, and, from The Met, Dr. Denise Murrell, Merryl H. and James S. Tisch Curator at Large.

Related Content
Featuring new photography by artist Tyler Mitchell, an illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition and includes more than 30 essays by various thought leaders, artists, and other distinguished voices. The book is published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed internationally by Yale University Press.

Join the conversation about the exhibition and Gala on social media: #SuperfineStyle, #CostumeInstitute, @MetCostumeInstitute, and #MetGala.