What You Need to Know About the Met Gala 2025 Theme: ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’

The Met Gala has always been fashion’s most theatrical night—a red carpet spectacular where celebrities cosplay in couture. But in 2025, the spectacle is set to become something more significant: Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.

This Monday’s event marks the launch of the Costume Institute’s first menswear-focused exhibition in over two decades, putting a side of fashion in the spotlight that typically ranks second to womenswear.

The Institute, which is responsible for the Met Gala and forms part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, houses a vast fashion collection and curates the museum’s annual headline exhibitions.

Yet it rarely puts menswear center stage.

And this year’s event won’t be a technical tour through tailoring. It is set to be a reflection on how clothing has carried weight—particularly for those long excluded from the center of power.

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The Met Gala—officially the Costume Institute Benefit—is held each year at the Met itself and serves as a fundraising kick-off for that year’s major fashion exhibition.

It began in 1948 as a modest benefit dinner and has since evolved into fashion’s most-watched spectacle, where red carpet arrivals are judged not by taste, but by how off-the-wall the outfits are.

Each year, the event sets the tone for the Met’s newest costume exhibition, with a theme that sets the dress code for fashion’s most scrutinized stars.

Past editions have seen Chadwick Boseman turn up in Vatican-meets-Versace for Heavenly Bodies (2018), Harry Styles blend Edwardian tailoring with sheer lace for Camp: Notes on Fashion (2019), and Lil Nas X cycle through three outré costume changes for In America: A Lexicon of Fashion (2021). In short, the whole thing is part gala, part runway, part avant-garde performance art—designed for headlines, memes and, just occasionally, some meaning.

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The 2025 theme dives into Black dandyism—a centuries-old tradition where Black men used tailoring not just to look good, but to reassert their identity. From Frederick Douglass’s dignified suits to Dapper Dan’s Harlem atelier, the exhibition traces how style became armor and identity and protest. It was inspired by Monica L. Miller’s 2009 book Slaves to Fashion.

Co-chairs for the evening include Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, and Anna Wintour, with honorary chair LeBron James. Their presence underscores the theme’s significance, bridging fashion, culture, and activism.

In a world where fashion often sidelines menswear—especially Black menswear—Superfine is a corrective lens.

In 2025, it’s the most fashionable statement of all.