The stars go to Met Gala, which shows black dandyism

It is the first Monday of May, which means that it is time for the MET gala, the extravagant MANhattan charity ball that this year highlights the black style through the lens of the subversive history of dandyism.

The theme of the box office night explores the rich and complicated history of custom Dandy aesthetics and its socio -political layers.

It also celebrates the opening of a corresponding exhibition, “Superfine: Sastring Black Style”, in the Metropolitan Museum of the Art Costume Institute.

But for fashionistas, the Met gala is simply one of the best red carpets in the world with the power of blinding stars.

The musician and designer Pharrell Williams, the rapper at $ Ap Rocky, the actor nominated for an Oscar, Colman Domingo and the Formula One pilot, Lewis Hamilton, are the co -chants of the Marquesina event supervised by Anna Wintour, editor in chief of Vogue.

The legend of the basketball LeBron James will serve as an honorary president and a host committee with Andre 3000 of Outkast, the Gimnama Estrella Simone Biles, the rapper doechii, the sprinter Sha'carri Richardson and the director Spike Lee promise a memorable style parade.

The night occurs five years after the huge anti -racist survey of the Black Lives Matter movement, which pushed several cultural institutions in the United States to deal with their representation of race and diversity.

This issue was serving years of creation, but now coincides with the recent efforts of Donald Trump to cancel institutional initiatives to promote diversity, an impulse to maintain the culture and history defined in the terms of the Republican President.

The Met Gala and its exhibition promises a strong contrast with that notion, a deep immersion in black dandyism from the 18th century until today.

The guest curator and the book by Barnard Monica Miller “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the styling of Black Diasporic Identity” was the inspiration of the MET.

His book details how dandyism was a style imposed on black men in 18th -century Europe, when the “dressed” dressed “dressed servants became a trend.

But black men throughout history undervigred the concept as a means to cultivate power, transforming aesthetics and elegance into a means of establishment of identity and social mobility.

During the vibrant Renaissance of Harlem of the 1920s and 1930s, men wore sharp costumes and polished shoes as a show of challenge in racially segregated America.

“If a dandy is subtle or spectacular,” Miller said in the announcement of the theme last fall, “we recognize and respect the deliberation of the dress, the self -conscious exhibition, the way in which this reach for perfection may seem frivolous, but it can raise a challenge to … social and cultural jerks.”

“Superfine” is a rare exposure of the Institute of Costume to highlight men and male fashion, and the first to focus on black designers and artists.

“Black men have always been on guard. They had to be,” wrote Washington Post, Robin Givhan, of the program.

“However, fashion was also a way to amplify its voice when it was deliberately silenced or easily ignored. It was liberating and stimulating.”

Monday's red carpet will surely include Odes for the late Andre Leon Talley, Vogue's first black creative director and one of the imposing fashion figures.

At the subject's announcement ceremony, Williams, the creative man director of Louis Vuitton's man, called the exhibition “A Dream”.

“As an artist who literally born and grew in the shadow from where the African diaspora expanded to the country that would become the United States, celebrating an exhibition centered on black dandyism and the African diaspora is really, for me, a complete circle moment,” said Williams, which is from Virginia.

The members of the black diaspora not only survived the horrors of slavery, he said, “but we carry music, culture, beauty and universal language in an ocean and during a quadruple century.”

The Met Gala was organized for the first time in 1948 and for decades it was reserved for the New York High Society, until Wintour transformed the party into a high -profile catwalk for the rich and famous in the 1990s.

It is still a collection of funds for the costume institute, but it is also an extravagance of social networks where stars and sponsors are mixed at a party that celebrates fashion in its most exaggerated form.

According to the New York Times, a dinner seat in 2024 cost $ 75,000 and a complete table was $ 350,000.

The famous Manhattan Museum reported that last year's edition raised about $ 26 million.