The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute will open "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" on May 10, an exhibition tracing over 300 years of Black dandyism. The show features around a dozen paintings, fashions, works on paper, photography, sculpture, and decorative objects, including a 1758 portrait of Roch Aza, a ten-year-old enslaved boy from Martinique, depicted in elegant livery alongside his enslaver. The exhibition examines how well-dressed Black figures appeared in European art as symbols of their owners' wealth and status during the transatlantic slave trade, and how subsequent generations have reappropriated and subverted that imagery.
This exhibition matters because it reframes a long-overlooked genre of portraiture, revealing how Black dandyism evolved from a signifier of enslavement into a powerful form of self-expression and cultural resistance. By connecting 18th-century paintings to contemporary fashion and photography, the show challenges traditional narratives of style and identity, highlighting the agency and creativity of Black men across centuries. As the inspiration for the 2025 Met Gala, the exhibition also signals a major institutional reckoning with the complex histories of race, fashion, and power in art.