Metropolitan Museum Celebrates Legacy Dressed “Up”

by Taryn Finley
Celebrities, stylists and journalists flocked the navy carpet at the 2025 Met Gala on Monday evening, pristinely dressed in an effort to pay homage to Black dandyism. Though it’s always a treat to see our favorite celebrities dressed to the nines, the sweetest glory lies in the halls of the museum with “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.”

Upon walking into the exhibition, co-curated by professor and author Monica L. Miller, it’s hard to see anything or anyone else but the art. The walls, painted a deep black, absorb the overhead light, leaving attention preserved specifically for the furniture, accessories, paintings and clothing on display.

The story of how Black folks went from being deemed “luxury slaves” to using their fashion as a tool of resistance, protection, and rebellion is on full display. The exhibition explores the evolution of dandyism through the years with works from André Leon Talley, Virgil Abloh, Grace Wales Bonner, Dapper Dan and more on display.

But one of the most interesting things about the exhibition is how it’s displayed. Patrons must tilt their heads and look up at the mannequins to truly see the clothes. This isn’t by accident. By putting the mannequins on a pedestal literally, the curators create a metaphor about their value and how they used clothes to assert themselves. Once — and often still — treated and seen as subhuman, the Black people wearing these clothes take their agency, their freedom and their worth into their own hands and deny the labels society puts on them. Black dandyism is just one expansive way we’ve risen above.

(Taryn Finley is an award-winning multi-media journalist, host, and producer. Her reflections on Ryan Coogler’ blockbuster “Sinners” film can be found at refinery29.com)

Strangers Meet, Lives are Changed

This spring, the African American experience in the history of resistance is being explored, everywhere, and through the prism of the African spiritual aesthetic and creative impulse. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” boldly takes the concept to the front of the catalogue book, a visual display of the evolution that revolution can wrought.

At the current exhibition, on view through fall, Elegance tips a derby to the Everyday, Superfine embraces Superfly, “Rags” outpaces Riches, and the life of a young man, Christian Latchman is changed and enhanced.

Before we move on, it must be noted that 30 blocks north of the museum, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem is celebrating its centennial. A May 1925 exhibition of scholar Arturo Schomburg’s vast collection marks the center’s birth, and links Brooklyn inextricably to the Harlem Renaissance.

Over the Bridge in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a Kosciusko Street property, once owned by Mr. Schomburg, now demolished and replaced by a public pool, was the womb where the great collector’s treasures gestated for more than two decades.

At The Met’s Monday morning press event, this writer connected with Brooklyn in yet another way. Taryn Finley and I were strangers sharing the same interest: a Brooklyn designer’s fashion statement. My Android jammed. I asked her to take the picture, seen on this page, of the mannequin. She studied the angle before taking the shot. I inquired about her profession. “I’m a journalist.” A few minutes later, we were walking out of the building with fashion icon Lana Turner.

For now, a Mother’s Day salute to Mrs. Latchman is in order. Her son, Christian, landed the cover of The Met exhibit book a week after being discovered by a sharp-eyed model agent. And just for the record, Christian’s father was born in Brooklyn.
— Bernice Elizabeth Green