Why Tailored Menswear On Black Women Stole The Met Gala's Spotlight

Forbes

06-05-2025

Janelle Monáe attends the Met Gala Celebrating "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" at Metropolitan ... More Museum of Art in New York City.
This year, the Met Gala saw a lot of tailored menswear on Black women, which signals a shift in fashion's approach to how gender and power are represented and understood. Although androgyny in style has arguably always been a go-to aesthetic in high-end fashion, the sight of Black women reclaiming traditionally male-coded clothing at one of the industry's most visible events signaled a clear shift. These were not women dressing 'like men,' but women using menswear to expand the boundaries of femininity and presence.
The most standout fashion statements this year weren't lavish gowns or avant-garde silhouettes. Instead, high fashion paired with tailored menswear, worn predominantly by Black women, set the tone for the night's aesthetic.
Zendaya attends the Met Gala Celebrating "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" at Metropolitan Museum ... More of Art in New York City.
The 2025 Gala theme, 'Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,' created a rare opportunity for the industry to center Black design, technique and historical influence. In response, many high-profile Black women opted for variations of menswear as intentional references to history and expressions of modern autonomy.
Throughout fashion history, tailored style has often represented power, esteem and credibility. Suits have represented status in Western contexts, particularly within professional and political environments. Yet, access to those visual symbols has not been equitably distributed for decades. At the 2025 Gala, Black women address these dynamics head-on, not through rhetoric, but through presentation.
This was reflected with subtlety and edge in some of the Gala's most talked-about looks. With a crimson tailored outfit that included a cape, cane, and dramatic plume, Teyana Taylor combined Afro-diasporic pageantry with Edwardian menswear. Zendaya embraced minimalism as power with her white three-piece suit and wide-brimmed hat. Janelle Monáe took it a step further in a boxy Thom Browne pinstripe suit, layered with red and white graphics and accessorized with a monocle, blurring fashion, satire, and performance and adding a playful, vintage-industrial edge that doubled down on the Dandyism-meets-performance-art energy of the outfit.
Teyana Taylor attends the 2025 Met Gala Celebrating "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" at ... More Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
These fashion choices rejected the simplistic interpretations that often equate tailored clothing with masculinity. Each look preserved and expressed individuality, femininity, heritage and intention. The tailoring created visibility rather than subduing it, and in doing so, the stars proved that structure does not always mean conformity, and minimalism does not always mean invisibility.
The timing of all of this also makes a difference.
Recently, conversations around workplace equity, public visibility and cultural ownership have repeatedly been referenced across industries and these fashion statements resonate beyond the red carpet to reinforce the idea that style, when taken in the right context, can act as a form of personal branding and cultural commentary.
The 2025 Met Gala offered a space where Black women were not just invited to participate in fashion's most exclusive night, but where they audaciously set its tone.