A New Book Just In Time for the Met Gala- Superfine: Tailoring Black Style
This new work explores Black dandy fashion and its representation in art and literature highlights the vibrant, complicated legacy of a recognizable yet constantly shifting style, from its origins in Enlightenment Europe to the contemporary art and fashion worlds
Today is Met Gala Monday, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (affectionally known as The Met) will be releasing a book coinciding with this year’s Gala theme and accompanying exhibition. Titled “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” really dives into the richly complex and vibrant legacy of menswear over a course of three-hundred years. It’s not just a well-crafted coffee table book, it’s a historic work of art told over 372 pages, with 241 illustrations.
By Monica L. Miller (a guest curator of the exhibition), along with Andrew Bolton (the current head curator of the Anna Wintour Costume Center at The Met), William DeGregorio, and Amanda Garfinkel- with photos taken by Tyler Mitchell. The book is published by The Met and distributed by Yale University Press. Monica is a professor of Africana Studies and Chair of the Africana Studies department at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her focus of teaching about Black literature, art, and performance, fashion cultures, and contemporary Black European culture contributed to her first book: Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity and ultimately Superfine.
Monica carefully unpacks various times throughout history where Black style has been most poignant, starting with enslaved Blacks and the imposed uniform upon them, the Civil Rights Movement and how it was a symbol of creative political agency, the Harlem Renaissance, street trends, to today’s Hip Hop aesthetic. The Black dandy a term that’s at the forefront of this year’s Gala theme and exhibition, can be best defined by Dr. Jonathan Michael Square, who’s on the advisory committee. He defines it in a CFDA article as a strategic use of clothing to challenge racial hierarchies and assert autonomy. Through dress black men were able to exert control over their lives expressing new visions of Black masculinity.
“This book is organized by key characteristics of dandyism that resonate across time, including presence, distinction, disguise, and respectability. This fresh interpretation of a centuries-old aesthetic draws on prominent Black voices in fashion, literature, and art—among them, Dandy Wellington, Amy Sherald, Iké Udé, and André 3000,” states press notes. Images of iconic and historic Black men from Frederick Douglass, to Alexandre Dumas, Muhammad Ali, and André
Leon Talley are strongly referenced. And Brooklyn-based photographer Tyler Mitchell, who was the first Black photographer to shoot for American Vogue (and who has shot Beyoncé, Jaden Smith, and Spike Lee) contributes a photo essay with emotionally proactive images of designs by Virgil Abloh, Pharrell Williams, and Grace Wales Bonner.
A well-worth-it purchase, Superfine is history, knowledge, and art all in one, a memory that can be passed down generation to generation.
The Superfine: Tailoring Black Style exhibition will be on display at The Met on Fifth Avenue from May 10th until late October.
