This year’s Met Gala dazzled with star power and striking style as celebrities including Rihanna, Zendaya, Madonna, and Diana Ross took to the red carpet on the First Monday in May. The 2025 event paid tribute to Black fashion through its theme, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” aligning with the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The exhibition—and now its official companion book—delves into the rich and complex history of Black fashion, focusing particularly on menswear, suiting, and the tradition of dandyism. High-profile attendees such as Colman Domingo and Pharrell Williams embraced the theme in their attire, joined by fellow Met Gala co-chairs Lewis Hamilton and A$AP Rocky.
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style will be released in hardcover on June 3. The 372-page volume is available now for pre-order on Amazon.
The book traces the evolution of Black style across three centuries, beginning with early artistic and literary representations in Africa and Europe, and continuing through the transatlantic migration of Black communities to the Americas. It explores how dress codes adapted and evolved—from uniforms imposed on enslaved people and servants, to symbols of political resistance and cultural pride during the Harlem Renaissance and civil rights movement, to today’s hip-hop and streetwear aesthetics.
Publisher notes describe the book as a study of how Black fashion has shaped and expressed identity, noting: “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style traces the complex and vibrant legacy of menswear… as a symbol of creative and political agency.”
The book also features images and stories of iconic Black figures from sports, politics, and the arts, including Frederick Douglass, Alexandre Dumas, Muhammad Ali, and André Leon Talley. A new photo essay by Tyler Mitchell—the first Black photographer to shoot a Vogue cover, which he did with Beyoncé in 2018—spotlights designs by modern Black designers such as Virgil Abloh, Pharrell, LaQuan Smith, and Grace Wales Bonner.
Organized around key themes of dandyism—such as presence, distinction, disguise, and respectability—the book draws on the voices of Black artists, writers, and designers to examine how fashion has long served as a tool for self-expression and a reimagining of Black masculinity.
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style was co-authored by Monica L. Miller, professor and chair of Africana Studies at Barnard College, and Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute. Miller, who also serves as a guest curator for the exhibit, previously explored similar themes in her 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity—a work that inspired this year’s Met Gala concept.
