Black fashion designers in the spotlight at Met Gala

Perth Now

05-05-2025

Pharrell Williams has high hopes for the Met Gala, the first to focus exclusively on Black designers, and the first in more than 20 years to have a menswear theme.
The event in New York on Monday (Tuesday AEST) will celebrate the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute's new exhibition, "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style".
"I want it to feel like the most epic night of power, a reflection of Black resiliency in a world that continues to be colonised, by which I mean policies and legislation that are nothing short of that," Williams recently told Vogue.
"It's our turn."
This year, the fundraising gala at the Met is hosted by a group of Black male celebrities, including Williams, the musical artist and Louis Vuitton menswear director, Lewis Hamilton, Colman Domingo, and A$AP Rocky, with NBA superstar LeBron James as honorary chair.
They're joined by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, the mastermind behind the gala, considered the year's biggest and starriest party.
Also guaranteed to show up is a second tier of hosts from a variety of worlds.
The gala raises the bulk of the curation budget for the museum's Costume Institute.
This year's Met Gala dress code is about tailoring and suiting as interpreted through the history and meaning of Black dandyism across the Atlantic diaspora.
The theme is inspired by the annual spring exhibition, which this year is based in large part on "Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity," a book written by Monica L Miller. She is guest curator of the exhibit.
"Historical manifestations of dandyism range from absolute precision in dress and tailoring to flamboyance and fabulousness in dress and style," Miller writes in the exhibit catalogue.
"Whether a dandy is subtle or spectacular, we recognise and respect the deliberateness of the dress, the self-conscious display, the reach for tailored perfection, and the sometimes subversive self-expression."
How the dress code goes, in terms of taste and style, is anyone's guess.
The guest list amounts to about 450 high-profile people from tech, sports, art, entertainment and more.
The mix, Williams said, is a must.
"It's so important to me to have successful Black and brown people of every stripe in the room: not just athletes and actors and actresses, entertainers, but also authors, architects, folks from the fintech world," he told Vogue.
"We've got to invest in each other. We've got to connect with each other, because it's going to take everybody to coalesce the force of Black and brown genius into one strong, reliable force."