Merriam-Webster defines a “dandy” as a man who gives exaggerated attention to his personal appearance. There have been plenty shown in works of art in these pages over the years. But a ground-breaking new take on the subject opens this month in the much-anticipated exhibition Superfine: Tailoring Black Style at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. A cultural and historical look at Black style in Europe and beyond from the eighteenth century to today, it’s the institute’s first exhibition in over twenty years to focus exclusively on menswear and the first to explore the importance of fashion to the formation of Black identities in the Atlantic diaspora.
Guest curator Monica Miller’s 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, served as a guide for the exhibition. According to Miller, the chair of Africana Studies at Columbia University’s Barnard College, “Dandyism can seem frivolous, but it often poses a challenge to or a transcendence of social and cultural hierarchies.”
Sartorial style is a powerful means for individuals to express their identity as it relates to their race, class, gender, sexuality, and power. Black dandy style has changed significantly since its roots in the 1700s: garments on view range from a velvet coat trimmed in gold lace worn by an enslaved man in c. 1840 Maryland to zoot suits of Harlem Renaissance entertainers, the capes of late Vogue fashion editor and fashion powerhouse André Leon Talley, and recent designs by Pharrell Williams for Louis Vuitton.
Black dandies didn’t simply wear their clothes—they embodied them, merging with each piece to become a living expression of style. Andrew Bolton, curator in charge at the Costume Institute, notes that Superfine: Tailoring Black Style reflects the institute’s ongoing commitment to diversifying its exhibitions in authentic ways. “What makes it possible to translate Monica’s book into an exhibition is our collection of high-style menswear, which serves as a foundation for imagining and realizing this important sartorial history.”
“Superfine” describes not only a particular wool fabric but also the idea of feeling good in one’s own body. “Wearing superfine and being superfine are, in many ways, the subject of this exhibition,” Miller says. “And the separateness, distinction, and movement between these two states of ‘being’ in the African diaspora from the 1780s to today
animates the show.” The garments on view are paired with paintings, prints, photographs, decorative arts, literary texts, and film. Visitors will travel through twelve thematic sections that define Black dandyism (Ownership, Presence, Distinction, Disguise, Freedom, Champion, Respectability, Jook, Heritage, Beauty, Cool, and Cosmopolitanism)—and reveal how Black individuals, who were once stylized in luxury garments as dandies as a form of conspicuous consumption took back the style as a means of self-determination, expression, and power.
—Danielle Devine
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style • Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art • May 10 to October 26 • metmuseum.org
