Commentary: Met Gala 2025: Black dandyism, gender play, and fashion as resistance

 "This year’s Met Gala theme, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, drew inspiration from a long history of Black dandyism and highlights the intersections of the body, fashion, and power.

"The dandy is a figure known for gendered transgressions, originating in the stylised queering of masculinity in the 19th century in England and France. While these white, male dandies such as Oscar Wilde are well-known, less attention has historically been paid to Black or female dandyism.

"The Met Gala’s focus on Black dandyism and performance of female dandyism by female guests disrupts the general perception of the dandy as a white, male phenomenon, and instead offers a space for gendered, fashioned transgressions. The theme is an opportunity to consider the ways in which gender, race and fashion intersect, and how these intersections relate to power and politics.

"This is particularly significant at a time of a conservative turn in relation to gender and diversity, such as Trump’s policies to abolish EDI initiatives, and a global backlash to trans rights that are arguably a conservative return to biological essentialism and regressive gender norms.

"In this context, as co-host rapper A$AP Rocky highlighted in a pre-Gala interview, fashion can blur gender lines in artistic ways, and we can see this in the outfits worn at the event. From Walter Goggins’ black-and-white skirt to androgynous artistic adaptations of the formal suit by Rihanna, Doechii and Janelle Monae, costumes challenged traditional associations of gendered fashion. Importantly, these outfits often referenced movements of Black cultural and artistic resistance, such as the 1920s Harlem Renaissance.

"Dandyism and its spectacular performance of gender at the Met Gala denaturalise the link between sex and gender in spectacular ways and emphasise a history of resistance through fashion."