By Longoae Domingos Tembwa

A deeper look into the roots of Black dandyism as protest—from 18th-century enslaved people using fashion to assert humanity, to contemporary stars at the Met Gala reclaiming space and style. Its defiant nature lives on, even in 2025, amidst attacks on the teaching of Black history led by the Trump administration over the past two months.

On the 5th of May 2025, the Met Gala became more than a red carpet - it became a runway of rebellion.  When the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced in October 2024 that the 2025 Met Gala would centre on Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, the initial reception was one of celebration. The theme promised to honour the rich tapestry of Black fashion, focusing on the elegance and innovation of Black dandyism across centuries. It was seen as a long-overdue acknowledgment of Black influence in fashion, with expectations of a glamorous homage to style icons past and present.

However, as the months unfolded, the sociopolitical landscape shifted dramatically. The Trump administration's aggressive rollback of diversity initiatives, coupled with international pressures on allies to abandon diversity programs, cast a shadow over cultural institutions. The Met Gala, once anticipated as a festive tribute, transformed into a platform for protest, affirmation, and defiance. Attendees used fashion not just to dazzle but to declare, turning the red carpet into a runway of resistance. The event evolved from a mere celebration of style to a poignant statement on identity, resilience, and the unyielding spirit of Black dandyism in the face of adversity.

Although the term “Black dandy” is a contemporary label, the practice it captures stretches back centuries. Revolutionary figures like Toussaint Louverture and Frederick Douglass may not have used the term, but they understood its essence. Through deliberate, polished self-presentation, they enacted what French poet Charles Baudelaire once defined: the dandy as someone who transforms aesthetics into an act of devotion—an act of resistance. Their garments were never just clothing; they were visual manifestos. Whether in cravats, military coats, or tailored suits, they fashioned dignity out of exclusion, using dress as both a mirror of selfhood and a shield against systemic erasure.

Baudelaire’s dandy—aloof, elegant, and unbending—was imagined as a white man resisting bourgeois conformity. What he could not have predicted was how profoundly that pose would be radicalised when adopted by Black bodies—first as mimicry, then as mastery. In the 18th century, when enslaved Africans in Europe were adorned in ornate livery by their masters, their dress was meant to reflect not their status but their owner’s wealth. But over time, what began as ornamental subjugation was reworked into subversion. The same garments, once symbols of ownership, became tools of liberation—reimagined as statements of defiance, reclamation, and self-determined identity.

Nowhere did Black dandyism evolve more audaciously than in the cultural crucible of the Harlem Renaissance. In the 1920s and ’30s, Harlem became a sanctuary for Black intellectuals, artists, and dreamers—a place where language, music, and fashion converged to forge a new aesthetic of pride. Figures like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Duke Ellington understood that clothing was never just surface. A well-cut coat or a silk tie could be as sharp as a pen, as lyrical as a poem, as defiant as a jazz riff.

The Harlem dandy embodied what the white world refused to believe: that Blackness could be refined, urbane, and endlessly expressive. In tailored suits and two-tone shoes, Black men and women claimed visibility in a society that sought to render them invisible. It wasn’t assimilation—it was confrontation through elegance. These were outfits stitched with meaning: Sunday best as armour, formalwear as freedom.

By the 1940s, this aesthetic found bolder expression in the zoot suit. With its exaggerated shoulders, flowing trousers, and wide-brimmed hats, the zoot suit was more than a fashion statement—it was a provocation. In an America gripped by racial segregation and wartime conformity, the zoot suit signalled rebellion. It represented youth, style, and above all, defiance. That’s why it became a target. The 1943 Zoot Suit Riots, during which servicemen violently attacked Black, Latino, and Filipino youths in Los Angeles, made it clear: when Black and brown bodies dressed on their own terms, it was seen not as style—but as insubordination.

Yet this too was part of the dandy’s long tradition. Like Baudelaire’s original figure—disrupting bourgeois norms through refinement—the Black zoot suiter disrupted white supremacy through flamboyance. And once again, what was meant to marginalize became an emblem of resistance.

In the aftermath of the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots, Black dandyism didn’t disappear—it recalibrated. Though the flamboyance of the zoot suit era had drawn public outrage, the spirit behind it—rebellion, elegance, and visibility—continued to evolve across decades and disciplines. From the civil rights marches of the 1950s and ’60s to the experimental stages of jazz and funk, the Black dandy refused to retreat into anonymity.

In the civil rights era, sartorial dignity became a political tool. Images of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other activists in sharply tailored suits communicated seriousness, respectability, and leadership. But beneath that surface was a subtle resistance. These men were well aware that in a white supremacist society, their very presence in formalwear challenged the visual codes of dominance. To dress impeccably while demanding equality wasn’t assimilation—it was strategic defiance. They were saying: we do not need your approval to command respect.

Simultaneously, Black musicians reshaped the landscape of dandyism into something louder, riskier, more radical. Miles Davis—cool, aloof, always a step ahead—turned his body into a canvas, his style evolving with his sound. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, mixed rhinestones and capes with precision tailoring, creating a regal performance of masculinity that couldn’t be ignored. These weren’t just costumes; they were declarations of power. Funk, soul, and later hip-hop artists took the blueprint of the dandy and reimagined it—making it louder, Blacker, bolder.

In the 1980s and '90s, two distinct yet complementary currents emerged. On one side was André Leon Talley, the towering fashion editor whose grand capes, gloves, and caftans brought Black presence into the heart of haute couture. On the other was Dapper Dan of Harlem, who flipped the Eurocentric codes of luxury fashion on their head. Using unauthorized Gucci and Louis Vuitton logos, he crafted custom pieces for rappers and hustlers alike, turning the language of elite fashion into a dialect of the streets. Talley disrupted the white institution from within; Dan did it from outside, on his own terms.

And across the Atlantic, in Congo, La Sape—the Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes—was turning postcolonial pain into Parisian polish. These “sapeurs,” often living in impoverished conditions, dressed in flamboyant suits and vivid colours, walking the streets like runways. Their defiance was quiet but profound: to dress as kings in a world that treated them as disposable was to reclaim the right to be seen.

In each of these movements, dandyism remained a way of elevating aesthetics to a philosophy. But in Black hands, it became something more—it became a strategy for liberation, an archive of pride, a refusal to disappear.

As the 21st century unfolded, Black dandyism shed its strictly masculine, heteronormative shell. What was once a subversive performance of refinement by Black men became a fluid, expansive canvas for Black identity across gender and sexuality. The suit remained—but the shoulders softened, the lines blurred, and the audience widened.

No figure exemplifies this shift more clearly than Janelle Monáe. Appearing in sharply tailored tuxedos while unapologetically embracing queerness and Afrofuturist aesthetics, Monáe transformed the dandy into a figure of multiplicity—at once masculine, feminine, futuristic, and ancestral. Their signature monochrome suits paid homage to working-class parents, but their fashion statements also carved out space for nonbinary and femme-presenting Black identities to flourish in public view.

Similarly, artists like Billy Porter took the red carpet—long the domain of conformity—and turned it into a battleground of beauty and visibility. In a now-iconic appearance at the 2019 Met Gala, Porter was carried in on a litter, adorned in gold, his wings spread wide—a high priest of camp and a prophet of fashion’s future. His tuxedo-gown hybrid at the Oscars declared once and for all: the dandy need not be male. He need only be fearless.

This spirit of reinvention echoes throughout contemporary fashion. In Lagos, Johannesburg, Paris, and Toronto, young creatives are blending streetwear, heritage fabrics, drag, tailoring, and gender play into wholly new visions of the dandy. Designers like Grace Wales Bonner and Telfar Clemens, and photographers like Tyler Mitchell and Campbell Addy, are not just documenting the aesthetic—they are shaping it, expanding it, queering it, decolonising it.

Importantly, this new wave of dandyism has emerged alongside increasing attacks on the very communities it celebrates. The Trump administration’s campaign against DEI policies has not only targeted race-based equity—it has sought to erase LGBTQIA+ inclusion and women's rights from federal policy. Through U.S. embassies, it has pressured allies like France, Sweden, and Belgium to comply with an ideological purge of “woke” values, if they ever wanted to collaborate with them. What began as an American rollback has metastasised into a global threat.

It is against this backdrop that the 2025 Met Gala unfolded.

Superfine: Tailoring Black Style does not just historicise the Black dandy—it reanimates him, her, and them in all their forms. The exhibition places portraits of enslaved boys in gilded coats beside photographs of nonbinary icons in paisley suiting. It displays military jackets worn by Louverture alongside contemporary couture created by queer Black designers. The past and the present don’t simply talk to one another—they conspire.

On the red carpet, these ideas take flight. Colman Domingo, in flowing silhouettes that balance structure with softness. Lewis Hamilton, whose looks blend Savile Row precision with diasporic boldness. A$AP Rocky, ever the disruptor, fusing classic tailoring with punk, pearls, and skirts. Each look is a reminder: the dandy isn’t static. He walks in many forms. He now dances in heels, she glides in androgynous armour, they pose in turbans and metallics, daring the world to label what it cannot contain.

In 2025, the dandy is not just defying whiteness. He, she, and they are defying boundaries of gender, sexuality, geography, and time. The Met Gala may still be fashion’s biggest night—but this year, it became its boldest battleground.