Nyasha by Beatrice Brandini
SuperfineTailoring-Black Style, photo by Tyler Mitchell
The Costume Institute’s exhibition, scheduled for spring 2025, presents a historical and cultural analysis of African-American style over three hundred years, through the concept of dandyism.
Superfine Tailoring Black Style, photo by-Tyler-Mitchell
In the Atlantic world of the 18th century, a new consumer culture, fueled by the slave trade, colonialism, and imperialism, provided access to clothing and goods that signaled wealth, distinction, and taste. African-American dandyism arose from the intersection of African and European stylistic traditions.
Superfine-Tailoring-Black-Style, photo by-Tyler-Mitchell
Superfine Tailoring Black Style explores the importance of style in the formation of African-American identities in the Atlantic diaspora, particularly in the United States and Europe.
Unknown 1940s–50s. Gelatin silver print. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Through the presentation of clothing and accessories, paintings, photographs, decorative arts and more, from the 18th century to the present, the exhibition interprets the concept of dandyism both as an aesthetic and as a strategy that opened up new social and political possibilities.
A glimpse of the Superfine Tailoring Black Style exhibition
Superfine is organized into 12 sections, each representing a defining characteristic of style, such as Champion, Respectability, Tradition, Beauty, and Cosmopolitanism.
Some of the clothes in the Superfine Tailoring Black Style exhibition
This is the first Costume Institute exhibition since “Men in Skirts” in 2003 to focus exclusively on menswear, and the first since Andrew Bolton became curator.
Glimpse of the Superfine-Tailoring-Black-Style exhibition
Bolton brought in another curator, Monica Miller, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Columbia University’s Barnard College, who examined the figure of the black dandy from its earliest representations in 18th-century art to modern representations on the runway and in film.
Some outfits in the Superfine-Tailoring-Black-Style exhibition
The exhibition draws inspiration from her 2009 book “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity.”
A outfit in the Superfine-Tailoring-Black-Style exhibition
Miller described black dandyism as “a strategy and a tool to rethink identity in a different context. To really push a boundary—especially during the time of slavery about who and what counts as a human being.”
Superfine Tailoring Black Style, photo by-Tyler-Mitchell
The history of black dandyism, the subject of the exhibition at the MET, highlights how blacks have transformed from slaves to role models (think for example of the world of music), examples that dictate trends on a global level.
Good life to all!
Beatrice