Wishing You a Superfine Met Gala Monday

It's fashion's biggest night of the year!

Hello, Dames Nationals!

It’s the first Monday in May and, if you care about pop culture and fashion, that means one thing: it’s Met Gala Monday!

Rihanna: a candidate for Pope we could all get behind.

While the outfits are reliably entertaining regardless of the theme (see: Rihanna, above, from the 2018 Gala which accompanied the exhibit Heavenly Bodies), We Your Dames are particularly excited about this year’s theme— or, more accurately, about the Met Costume Institute Exhibit it’s celebrating. While the theme for the Gala’s outfits is the open-ended “tailored for you,” the exhibit this party exists to promote Met Costume Institute Exhibit it accompanies: Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. The exhibit is a collaboration between Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s head curator, and Monica Miller, professor and chair of Africana Studies at Barnard and Columbia and author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, which is a subject we find fascinating. In tribute to that, I have found a collection of links about the theme to deepen your enjoyment of the extravagant fits the evening brings— which you can admire most easily at Vogue’s live update blog.

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• Here is Vogue’s own overview of what “Black dandyism” means, which is a solid place to start with the reading.

• Building off that, the BBC has a deeper dive into the topic that I really enjoyed reading.

• The archival images The Conversation pairs with its overview of Black dandyism are extremely well-chosen.

• This Interview Magazine interview between Jeremy O. Harris and co-curator Monica Miller is beautiful mix of exuberant and erudite:

HARRIS: How much did hip-hop inform this exhibition?

MILLER: That’s where the exhibition is super different from my book, and in a really great way. In writing the book, I had to think about dandyism under certain parameters so that I could actually write about it, and not have a book that never ended. But the translation of the book from primarily thinking about literature and visual culture into an exhibition that’s about fashion and objects meant that I could think in multiple genres, but also expand historically. I’m writing about Janelle Monae, about hip-hop and fashion and contemporary streetwear. Being able to bring that into the exhibition was fantastic. And to think about the suit as everything from a bespoke tailored suit in the 19th century to a Grace Wales Bonner tracksuit—both are equally as elegant and intentional and accessorized.

• And it pairs brilliantly with Harris’s essay for Vogue on being a modern Black dandy.

• From Fader, we have a list of 5 influential Black designers whose work might be referenced or featured tonight.

• And here’s an excellent episode of the Articles of Interest podcast that goes deep on Dapper Dan, one of the Black designers the prior article mentions.

• We also loved this pair of articles on a particular subset of Black dandyism, the Sappeurs of the Congo and Paris

• Which would not be complete without a photo collection of Sappeurs, courtesy of the BBC.

• And, if all of this has piqued your interest as much as it has ours, BET put together an excellent reading list for further study!

Now I’m going to sign off and mark the holiday as God intended: by introducing my boyfriend to the delight that is Ocean’s 8.

Be gay, do crimes! XO/Dame Margaret