The political landscape looked very different last October when the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute unveiled its next fashion show, “Superfine: Tailing Black Style.”
Kamala Harris, the first female vice president and the first black woman to win a major party ticket, was in the final weeks of the White House campaign. It was the culmination of five years of work by Andrew Bolton, the show's representative for the show, and it seemed to have been postponed for a long time, as it diversified the division's holdings and show in the wake of the racial calculations brought about by George Floyd's murder.
But it does so in a very different world when it finally opens to starry guests at Signature Gala, the flashiest party of the year. A functional declaration by the federal government, particularly in cultural institutions, not only of race-related programming, but also of war on diversity, equity and inclusion.
In February, President Trump took control of the Kennedy Center and promised to “wake up” programming less. Then in late March, he signed an executive order targeting what the administration described at the Smithsonian Museum as “inappropriate, splitting or anti-American ideology,” and threatened to withhold funds for exhibits “dividing Americans by race.”
Contrary to that background, the Met show was entirely dedicated to designers of colours that focused on how black men use fashion as a tool for self-realization, revolution and subversion through American history and the Black Diaspora.
Suddenly, one of the richest and most established museums in the world, the Met began to look like resistance. And, in recent years, gala has been criticized as a jarring display of privilege and fashion absurd tones, is considered Brandis Daniel, the founder of Harlem's Fashion Row, a platform created to support designers of colours called “allyship” displays.
In particular, the mastermind of the Met Gala, the powerful Democrat fundraiser and Chief Content Officer of Conde Nast, said in 2017's The Late Late Show that Trump was the one she would never invite to Fete.
Tanisha C. Ford, a history professor at the Graduate Center at New York University, said the clash of cultural and current events means that the Met now sits at the “center of where fashion meets political and economics.”
“I feel that this is far greater than just fashion,” said Louis Pisano, a cultural critic and newsletter author. “If you put the black style front and center, you'll get a real message.”
“I never thought I'd see it in my life,” said Sandrine Charles, a fashion council spokesman and co-founder.
This brings the companies that sponsor the show and gala, including Instagram and Louis Vuitton, both owned by companies that actively court the Trump administration, but are walking on a volatile tightrope walk. It raised interests over what has become known as “Party of the Year.” And it turned pop culture events into a potential political statement.
So who's going?
It is expected that more black designers will be worn on the red carpet at the opening party this year. More black stylists will adorn celebrities, and more black celebrities are expected to be present in the 77-year history of Gala. In addition to Wintour, the gala co-chairs are Asap Rocky, Lewis Hamilton, Colman Domingo and Pharrell Williams. The honorary chair is LeBron James.
“It's important not to sit this,” Pisano said. “It's not when black fashion is finally focused on institutions that have been historically excluded,” he was talking about both the show and the gala. “I'm already paying attention to conservative backlash, which is why it's especially important for people to show up,” he continued.
Little is known about the guest list, but this is controlled by Wintool and kept secret until the event, with some leaks and confirmations.
Meta's chairman Mark Zuckerberg is pleading for the president, but has not attended the gala this year. But Adam Mosseri, CEO of Meta's Instagram, is there as he has been in the past.
Bernard Arnaud, chairman of LVMH, who was at Trump's inauguration, will be attending the event since 1996, with Pietro Beccali, CEO of LVMH brand Lewis Vuitton. Jeff Bezos, who attended last year and his fiancee Lauren Sanchez, are not expected to be there this year, and there are none other Trump right-handed men, Elon Musk, who recently attended three times before.
The irony said, “The show was never about politics, not now, not about politics.” Rather, she added that it was about “keeping the lens of self-determination, beauty, creativity and history.”
At the same time, she admitted:
I'm always troubled by a variety of reasons
In 2021, Bolton first began thinking about the exhibition. This is based on a 2009 academic textbook called “Slave to Slave” by Professor Bernard Monica L. Miller, who also enlisted as a co-curator of the show. Specifically, whether the department that has never had a black curator and the costume lab, part of a museum with a history of racism, will fail exhibitions on the use of fashion as an instrument of regeneration and liberation of the body service of black men.
Adding more complications was the fact that Wintool, the department's biggest champion (renamed the Anna Wintour Costume Centre in 2014), faced her own allegations in the past to create a racially insensitive workplace in Vogue. Needless to say, despite many DEI initiatives since 2020, it appears that the fashion world has not been able to do good things with those promises. Of the more than 15 appointments at the top of the leading brands this year, not one of them was a designer of colour.
Bolton and Wintool were “self-aware enough to know that we couldn't pull this off without the deep involvement of the community involved and advice,” said Gabriela Karefa-Johnson, stylist and former global contributor editor of Vogue (who left in 2023).
That meant bringing not only Professor Miller but modern Dandy Ike Ude as consultants. That meant working with anyone of the well-known black creatives: Torkwase Dyson in the show space, Tanda Francis in the Mannequins, Tyler Mitchell in the catalog, and Kwameon Uchi on the menu. This meant having the first “host committee” since 2019, hosting a special advance panel discussion at Apollo Theater in Harlem and Bedsty's Billie Holiday Theater.
“Hollywood will understand the challenge,” Professor Ford also mentioned some concerns about how certain guests will be dressed for the gala. “Has anyone misrepresented black culture and black dresses?” she continued.
Karefa-Johnson was even dry. “I really don't want to see floor-length durags or pimp canes,” she said. (Even so, she called out the fact that the show is happening in the current climate with “poetic.”) Jeffrey Banks is the designer included in the exhibition, calling it “innovative.”
“I have great respect for the fact that they decided to have this conversation and stand strong in the face of that risk,” said Who D'Amore, who decides the brand War, featured at the exhibition.
Still, unlike the Smithsonian, the Met's reliance on government funds is negligible. As a private institution, MET is not subject to the government's anti-DEI policy. The museum's diversity statement is still posted on its website for everyone to see. (According to the spokeswoman, the 13-point “Anti-Meiratisation and Diversity Plan” announced in 2020 was incorporated into the museum's strategic plan in 2022.
The most important relationship with government may be through federal arts and artifact compensation programs. This is an initiative managed by the National Fund of Arts, which guarantees art to and from American museums, to reassure lenders that their masterpieces are protected by the government and defend institutional costs. MET has its own insurance, but it applies to federal compensation for the largest and most valuable shows, giving the government some leverage.
So many people involved in “Superfine” are focusing on not just on the gala night, but on what will happen next, at star-studded charms and exhibition receptions.
“Will we continue to shake again next year?” asked Maxwell Osborne, designer at Anonlychild. “As you know, we had Obama in two terms and we'll be back all the way.”
