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The Met Gala is over, but dandyism isn't. Here's how to dress like a dandy in everyday life

The Met Gala is over, but dandyism isn't. Here's how to dress like a dandy in everyday life

NEW YORK (AP) — Michael Henry Adams had reached a fashion crossroads by the early 1970s: As bell bottoms and afros became the trend and the look of film figures like John Shaft and 'Super Fly' became style prototypes, the teenager felt unrepresented.
But a previous trip to the Museum of Modern Art, for its 'Harlem On My Mind' exhibit, had already begun to lay down his fashion foundation.
'When I saw those photographs of elegant Harlemites promenading up and down Seventh Avenue and Lennox Avenue … the raccoon coats and fox coats, and spangled gowns, and bowler hats — all this satirical splendor … I thought, 'Oh! There is another way for me to be authentically Black,'' recalled the New York-based cultural and architectural historian, now 69. Cultural and architectural historian Michael Henry Adams poses for a portrait on Thursday, May 1, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Gary Gerard Hamilton)
The style Adams would embrace had a name: dandyism. And dandyism was at the heart of Monday's Met Gala, where many of the world's most famous and influential tastemakers donned their luxury best to kick off the 'Superfine: Tailoring Black Style' exhibit. But Black dandyism isn't limited to expensive couture — it's displayed daily.
'It's everywhere in the Black community, the notion of what a dandy is,' explained Adams, who was photographed for the 'Superfine' catalog. 'The ingeniousness and ingenuity and creativity of Black people, so far as fashion was concerned, it's always been with us.'
As the menswear-focused exhibit — the Costume Institute's first to exclusively display Black designers — opens to the public Saturday, here are tips from dandies on embracing the style in everyday life.
Tip 1: Start with confidence
Dandies say the key to a distinctive look first begins on the inside.
'Fashion's a sense of personality. Two guys can go to the same store and get the same outfit and look totally different,' said Guy Wood, 62, the stylish co-owner of Harlem Haberdashery. Inspired by family members and dapper Harlem neighbors, he developed a knack for style early. 'It's confidence … you walk in the room, and all the heads turn.'
Michael Andrew, a 42-year-old Atlanta-based style consultant, first delved into dandyism after being inspired by Fonzworth Bentley, most recognized as Sean 'Diddy' Combs' often-photographed assistant and umbrella holder in the early 2000s. Bentley's colorful outfits and tailored outfits separated himself from the hip-hop era's prevalent baggy look.
'A lot of guys think that being a dandy is about being over the top,' said Andrew, who was photographed for Rose Callahan's 2013 book 'I Am Dandy: The Return of the Elegant Gentleman.' 'For me, dandyism is the highest form of taste with self-expression.'
Tip 2: Opt for the statement pieces
The foundation of dandyism rests upon tenets such as bold colors and fine tailoring, but there's no singular way to achieve the look. Each dandy creates their own unique style, often centered on specific elements. For Wood, who refers to crafting looks as making gumbo, it starts with suits.
'Wearing a suit, you just feel important,' said Wood, who often pairs them with brogue shoes of various bright colors. 'We love well-tailored.'
James McFarland, an 80-year-old master tailor, says a dandy's affinity for tailoring is easy to understand: 'It's very simple: we're a visual world. When you wear something that's fine tailored and it's fitting you well, people look at that.'
Known as 'Gentleman Jim,' McFarland was tutored by Orie Walls, the go-to Harlem-based tailor of the 1960s. McFarland says they crafted suits for nearly every famous Black male celebrity of the time, from Duke Ellington to Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali — as well as some of the era's most infamous characters, like gangsters Frank Lucas and Bumpy Johnson. He says wearing a suit 'makes you feel better. You ever heard the term styling and profiling?'
While Adams, the historian, is drawn to bow ties, buck shoes and straw hats, Andrew says the beauty of dandyism is making it your own.
'Texture is the must-have when you start talking about dandyism — textures and patterns. The great point here is that dandies always have their thing. And so, for me, hats are my thing,' Andrew said, adding that small accessories, like stylish wool or cashmere socks and pocket squares, can easily elevate a look. 'Now, it's starting to become glasses. … Every dandy has the opportunity to utilize something.'
Tip 3: Creativity is worth more than cash
Wood says creativity is essential to becoming a dandy — not a high income.
'That's a cheat code,' said Wood. 'It is being creative … most of us don't have a lot of money. You might go in your mom's closet and (think), 'Oh, that scarf is fly.' You tie it around your neck and lay it over your shoulder. You just can't be scared.'
Adams says while style and inspiration can go hand-in-hand, individuality should always be paramount.
'People should find their truth and aspire to look like themselves,' he said, noting he shops at a variety of stores, from the high-end Brooks Brothers to off-price and discount stores like Marshalls and K&G Fashion. 'Part of the thing that made me rebel against looking like 'Super Fly' or 'Shaft' is I didn't want to look like everybody else.'
Jacques Agbobly, a designer whose clothes are featured in the Met exhibit, agrees.
'There are people who would really just think it's about the suit that you're wearing and the top hat … but for me, and I think that's what this exhibition does really fondly, is really putting together a group of amazing clothing that really redefines what dandyism is,' he said. For the Togo-born designer, 'taking up space is a sort of open-ended thing in a way,' whether it's achieved through colors, silhouettes or fabric choices.
Tip 4: Avoid the crisis of casualness
A general consensus among dandies is that society has embraced casualness, shunning the well-dressed looks of the past.
McFarland, the tailor, says his profession isn't as admired or used in U.S. as it was years ago. He teaches fine tailoring as he has for decades, and is planning to start a podcast to discuss the craft and his adventures styling celebrities of his era.
'When I grew up, I wanted to look like the people in the neighborhood,' he said, explaining his mother couldn't afford the clothes he wanted, leading him to tailoring. 'Everybody, male and female, was dressed up.'
Andrew hopes that same stylish spirit of yesteryear can make a resurgence, believing appearance and pride work together.
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'I would challenge or would encourage all of us, especially as Black people, to remember our history, to remember that we used to throw on our Sunday's best,' he said. 'We wanted to show up as the best versions of ourselves.'
The 'Superfine: Tailoring Black Style' exhibit, which will run through October, is sure to introduce visitors to the most elevated forms of Black dandyism. But for Wood and fellow daily dandies, it's just business as usual.
'The fact that the Met realizes that is a beautiful thing,' he said with a sly smile. 'But we've been doing this forever and we really not paying attention to it. We just do it because we love it.'
___
Follow Associated Press entertainment journalist Gary Gerard Hamilton at @GaryGHamilton on all his social media platforms.

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(RNS) — When he was a teenager in the 1990s, Jordan Morris was always up for a bit of mischief — as long as it didn't involve sex or drugs, two things he was sure would kill him. So he went to a megachurch youth group, which promised teenage shenanigans without much danger. The 'sanitized mischief,' as he describes it, was perfect for Morris, who grew up as a nerdy, nervous kid. 'Youth group was great for me,' Morris said. 'We can put on a show, we can sing little songs, we can do little skits. We can toilet paper the pastor's house and clean it up later. And I just don't have to worry that someone is going to try and pressure me into something that I'm scared of.' Now a Los Angeles-based comedy writer and podcaster, Morris has fond memories of his time in youth group. Those memories — and his love for horror movies like 'The Exorcist' — inspired him to write 'Youth Group,' a graphic novel about church teens who fight demons while singing silly songs about Jesus. ___ This content is written and produced by Religion News Service and distributed by The Associated Press. RNS and AP partner on some religion news content. RNS is solely responsible for this story. ___ Think 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' — the 1990s hit movie and later television series — goes to church. 'I thought it would be a fun challenge,' Morris, whose previous graphic novel, 'Bubble,' was nominated for an Eisner Award, told Religion News Service in an interview earlier this year. 'Can we do one of those religious horror stories, but make it kind of funny?' Morris also said he'd rarely seen stories set in the kind of youth group he'd grown up in. 'I've just never seen that little world written about in a way that I thought was like, accurate or, like, that got what it was about,' he said. Published last year by New York-based First Second Books, 'Youth Group' tells the story of Kay Radford, a theater kid who winds up joining the Stone Mission megachurch youth group after her parents split up. Her mom is a true believer but lonely. Kay is more skeptical but lonely as well and angry at her dad. 'Church might help with all this,' Kay's mom tells her early on. 'I think we both could use some community.' At the youth group, Kay is met by youth leader Meg Parks, a kind but sometimes over-the-top youth leader in pink; a bearded, hippy pastor who turns the 'Pina Colada song' — the Rupert Holmes hit 'Escape' — into a metaphor for spiritual seeking; and a band that churns out parodies like 'I Saw the Christ' sung to the melody of Ace of Base's 'The Sign.' Though fictional, the songs fit the kind of pop culture reference — sometimes known as a 'Jesus juke' — that youth groups can be known for. 'I always think there's something funny about that move, where you take a secular piece of entertainment, like a song that's in the zeitgeist, or a popular movie and try and give the hidden religious message,' Morris said. Kay eventually discovers the youth pastor and some of the older Stone Mission kids also fight demons. That fight becomes personal after one of the demons goes after her dad, and Kay decides to join the battle. Along the way, the Stone Mission kids team up with youth groups from other faiths — Temple Beth Israel, Immaculate Heart parish and the Polaris Coven — to fight off a demon invasion with the help of some training by an order of nuns. Morris said he and illustrator Bowen McCurdy wanted to tell a story that was more than just satire. And while he no longer embraces the faith of his youth, Morris still sees value in the lessons he learned, like the importance of loving your neighbor. 'We wanted to tell a story of people from a lot of different religions coming together with a common goal,' he said. Matthew Cressler, a religion scholar and creator of the webcomic series 'Bad Catholics, Good Trouble,' said comics with evangelical or denominational settings like 'Youth Group' are uncommon. Religion in comics, he said, is often seen as 'a marker of difference': for example, Kamala Khan, the Muslim-American hero known as Ms. Marvel, or Matt Murdock, better known as Daredevil, who is Irish-Catholic. In the 1960s, when Daredevil was created, Catholics were still seen as outsiders to the American mainstream, and many of the most popular heroes, like Batman, were seen as Mainline Protestants. While there were comics for evangelicals, they were often evangelistic, like the controversial Jack Chick tracts or the Christianized adventures of Archie and his friends, published by Spire Comics starting in the 1970s. And evangelicals have often downplayed the kind of sacramental imagery and architecture found in mainline or Catholic settings and try to avoid the kind of visuals needed for comics, said Cressler. Matthew Brake, founder and editor of online publication Pop Culture and Theology, said non-denominational churches often have a 'let's go to the mall aesthetic' and lack the visual clout of Catholicism. 'Nondenominational churches are sort of a cultural underdog,' he said. That may change, Brake said, as creators like Morris, who grew up in non-denominational settings, come of age. And those settings often contain surprises. Although they are most known for things like worship music and purity culture, megachurches also provide space to talk about things like social justice. Still, he wonders if many nondenominational Christians would be the kinds of fans that would enjoy a book like 'Youth Group' or 'Preacher,' a late-1990s comic about an evangelical pastor who ends up possessed by a supernatural being. David Canham, who reviews comics for the secular pop-culture website AIPT — short for 'Adventures in Poor Taste' — had mixed feelings about 'Youth Group.' 'First off, there's plenty of '90s nostalgia — a good-natured tongue-in-cheek look back at many of the silly and absurd things about '90s culture, with a focus on evangelical Christian culture,' he wrote when the book came out. ''Youth Group' delivers on this point.' But the book's take on pluralism — the idea that all religion is on the same side — turned him off as an evangelical Christian. 'I don't want to recommend a book that promotes a worldview that so strongly disagrees with my own beliefs,' he wrote. At first, Morris said he was worried the book might offend Christians and atheists alike. Some evangelicals might feel the book mocks their faith, while atheists might think the book overlooks the shortcomings of religious groups. Sundays Kevin Rollason's Sunday newsletter honouring and remembering lives well-lived in Manitoba. Both those criticisms would be fair, he said. Religious groups get a lot of things wrong, and yet churches and other faith groups remain important to their members. Morris said he tried to walk a fine line of gently poking fun at faith while showing why it still has an impact on people's lives, and how the friendships made in youth groups may long endure. 'I didn't want the humor to be like, church is stupid, or say, 'look at this dumb church stuff,'' he said. 'I wanted it to be funny and familiar.' Morris said he wanted to capture the mixed feelings people have about the faiths in which they grew up. While he appreciated Bible teachings like caring for the needy, some of the politics and social messages, especially about LGBTQ+ folks, were a turnoff, he said. Religion, he said, is complicated. 'There are a lot of wonderful memories, and there's a lot of stuff that gives me the ick,' he said. 'I hope that's in the book. I hope you can see how a religious upbringing can be upsetting and wonderful — comforting but also makes you mad.'

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