Superfine' Exhibit Explores Black Style At The Met

Summary

All Of It Podcast Summary: “Superfine’ Exhibit Explores Black Style At The Met”

Introduction to the Episode Hosted by Alison Stewart, the “All Of It” episode titled “Superfine’ Exhibit Explores Black Style At The Met” delves into the Metropolitan Museum of Art's latest exhibition, Super Fine Tailoring Black Style. Released on May 16, 2025, the episode features Monica Miller, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Barnard College, as the guest curator of the exhibition.

The Met Gala and Black Dandyism Alison Stewart opens the discussion by highlighting this year's Met Gala theme, which celebrated Black Dandyism—a style emblematic of self-expression that enables Black individuals to assert their individuality, dignity, and autonomy amidst societal constraints. The gala successfully raised a record $31 million, setting the stage for the new exhibition titled Tailoring Black Style. The exhibition showcases approximately 230 pieces, including garments, paintings, photographs, and ephemera, that trace the role of clothing and style in shaping Black identities across the Diaspora.

Alaudo Equiano’s Legacy At [02:42], Alison introduces Monica Miller, who explains the significance of the exhibition's title, a quote from Alaudo Equiano: “I laid out above £8 of my money for a suit of super fine clothes to dance with at my freedom” [02:42]. This poignant statement sets the tone for the exhibit, emphasizing the transformative power of sartorial expression in the journey from enslavement to freedom. Monica elaborates on Equiano's life, noting his unique experience as an enslaved individual who authored a memoir detailing the Middle Passage and his eventual self-liberation [06:03].

Translating Scholarship to Visual Culture Monica discusses the creative process of translating her academic work, specifically her book Slaves to Black Dandyism and the Styling of the Black Diasporic Identity, into a visual exhibition [07:16]. She explains how the transition involved incorporating not just garments but also paintings, prints, and decorative arts to create an immersive experience. An illustrative example she provides is a small case featuring a silver coin called a dandy Pratt alongside a pendant by contemporary designers Seoul and Dynasty Ogun [08:43]. This juxtaposition symbolizes the exchange of self-worth and the construction of identity through different cultural and historical lenses.

Exhibition Sections: Distinction and Cosmopolitanism The conversation progresses to discuss specific sections of the exhibition. In the Distinction section, Monica highlights figures like Toussaint Louverture, whose military uniforms exemplify the revolutionary spirit of the Haitian Revolution and the assertion of a self-determining Black republic [10:47]. She explains how these uniforms symbolize discipline, pride, and a collective identity that transcends mere military prowess.

Moving to the Cosmopolitanism section, Monica emphasizes the role of travel and migration in evolving Black identities [13:01]. She quotes Frantz Fanon: “In the world in which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself,” illustrating how movement and cultural exchange influence self-expression and empowerment through fashion [13:01].

Respectability Politics and Self-Fashioning A significant portion of the discussion revolves around Respectability Politics [14:36]. Monica articulates the dual nature of self-fashioning—balancing personal expression with external expectations. She states, “Fashioning the self is sometimes something you do for others, right?” highlighting the tension between authentic self-expression and the need to conform for social acceptance or advancement [14:36]. This dialectic is central to the exhibition, which celebrates contemporary Black designers while acknowledging historical and ongoing tensions.

Inclusivity of Various Genders The exhibit also addresses gender diversity within Black dandyism [16:01]. Monica shares the story of Stormy Delaverie, a masculine-presenting woman and LGBTQ activist who used fashion as a means of self-expression and identity concealment [17:00]. This inclusion underscores the exhibition’s commitment to exploring the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class within the framework of Black style.

Connection to the Met Gala Monica reflects on the intersection between the Met Gala and the exhibition [18:18]. She expresses delight in seeing her academic work resonate within popular culture, particularly through celebrity engagement. Notable figures like Colman Domingo and Jody Turner Smith embraced the exhibition’s themes, showcasing ensembles that pay homage to historical Black figures and styles [19:07]. Monica remarks, “It was so beautiful... really, it was actually really moving” [19:07], highlighting the emotional and cultural impact of these representations.

Conclusion As the conversation wraps up, Alison thanks Monica for her insights and resilience through technical difficulties [20:05]. Monica reiterates her appreciation for the opportunity to share the exhibition's vision [20:21]. The episode effectively encapsulates the profound connections between fashion, identity, and cultural history, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of the Super Fine Tailoring Black Style exhibition.

Key Takeaways:

• Black Dandyism serves as a powerful medium for self-expression and autonomy within the Black community.
• Alaudo Equiano’s legacy underscores the historical importance of fashion in the transition from enslavement to freedom.
• The exhibition Super Fine Tailoring Black Style bridges academic scholarship and visual culture, making complex historical narratives accessible and engaging.
• Respectability Politics and self-fashioning are critical themes that highlight the balance between personal identity and societal expectations.
• The inclusion of diverse gender narratives enriches the exhibition’s exploration of Black style and identity.

Notable Quotes:

• Monica Miller [02:42]: “Alaudo Equiano... used sartorial expression to signal his newfound freedom.”
• Monica Miller [07:16]: “The translation was like opening up my head... creating an experience that people could walk through.”
• Monica Miller [14:36]: “Respectability politics can impose particular style... or it can be something that is taken on as a strategy.”
• Monica Miller [19:07]: “It was so beautiful... really, it was actually really moving.”

This episode of All Of It provides an insightful exploration of Black style's historical and contemporary significance, highlighting the intricate ways fashion intersects with identity, politics, and culture.

Transcript

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[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Coming up on today's show, author Carl Hiaasen is here. His new book, Fever beach tackles white supremacy, far right extremism, dark money, billionaires and our polarized culture. And of course, it takes place in Florida. We'll also talk about a new play at the Irish Rep called the Black Wolf Tone and it stars Dublin's own Kwaku Fortune. He plays a man named Kevin who is smart and charming and finds himself at a psychiatric hospital. He joins us to talk about his one man show and will speak with Tony award winning producer and now author Jeffrey Seller. His new memoir is titled Theater Kid. That's the plan. So let's get things started with the Met Costume Institute. The theme of this year's Met Gala celebrated Black Dandyism, a style of self expression which allows black people to assert individuality, dignity and autonomy in the face of societal constraints. The gala raised a record $31 million, and now patrons can learn more about the origins of the style at a new exhibition. It's titled Tailoring Black style. Featuring approximately 230 garments, paintings, photographs and ephemera, it explores the importance of both clothing and style in the formation of black identities across the Diaspora. The show harkens back to coats worn by those in subjugation to uniforms of Haitian generals worn in the fight for liberation. Joining us to discuss it is guest curator Monica Miller, who is the professor and a chair of Africana Studies at Barnard College. She wrote the book Slaves to Black Dandyism and the Styling of the Black Diasporic Identity. Superfine Tailoring Black Style will be on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through Sunday, October October 26th. Monica, welcome to all of it.

[Monica Miller]

Oh, thank you so much, Allison. It's a real pleasure to be here.

[Alison Stewart]

The show's title is taken from an 18th century story of a captured and enslaved African man. He said, I laid out above £8 of my money for a suit of super fine clothes to dance with at my freedom. It's written on the wall as you enter the exhibit. Who was he and why does this statement give us something to think about as we walk through the show.

[Monica Miller]

Alaudo Equiano, his story is phenomenal. He was an enslaved man who, who authored his memoir, was one of, was considered to be one of the few, if not the only mount of the middle Passage. So, so we looked to Alato Equiano's memoir to learn about that experience and also to stand what it meant.

To.

Transition from enslavement to freedom. And in his particular case, self was enslaved as he was enslaved to somebody who's a merchant and learned the merchant's trade and eventually was allowed to trade on his own and saved up that eight pounds.

[Alison Stewart]

Monica, you know what, Monica, I'm going to interrupt you for one second because you know what? You're fading in and out. Your connection is bad. So we're going to get you on the phone. I'm going to tell our listeners about our get lit with all of it book club event. While we get you on the phone, listeners, I want you to know that we are reading Audition by Katie Kitamura. It's our get lit with all of it selection. It's about an established actress and a young man who sit down together for a lunch in Manhattan and they're able to talk to each other. But we really want to know what this lunch is all about. It soon becomes clear. I will be in conversation with Katie Kitamura and you on Thursday, May 29th at 6pm at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library. Our special musical guest is also a stage actor, but he's also a musician as well. It's Reeve Carney. If you would like to know more about this, head to wnyc.org getlit Again, this is happening on Thursday, May 29th. Tickets are free, but they will go fast. So head to wnyc.org getlit to reserve yours. You are listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Monica Mitchell Miller. We're talking about the Met costumes new exhibition Super Fine Tailoring Black Style with Monica Miller, whose books Slave to Fashion, Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Thesporus Identity inspired a theme for this year's gala. Monica, are you there?

[Monica Miller]

Yes, I am.

[Alison Stewart]

Oh, you sound so good. That sounds better. You were explaining to me a little bit about this enslaved African man. Would you start again for us?

[Monica Miller]

I'm sorry, I can't hear very well.

[Alison Stewart]

Would you please explain to us the story behind the man whose quote starts the exhibition?

[Monica Miller]

Yes. So the man whose quote starts the exhibition is named Alaudo Equiano and he was an enslaved man whose memoir that you just quoted from was one of the very, very few memoirs by enslaved people that included an account of the Middle Passage. And he had incredibly cosmopolitan life. He was captured in West Africa, enslaved in the Caribbean, spent some time in Virginia, and then eventually moved to England after he was able to self liberate. What's important about that moment of self liberation for me and for the exhibition is that he signaled this new feeling of freedom through sartorial expression. It was important for him, signally important for him to save that money to buy the suit of super fine clothes to dance in at his freedom. So it was super fine for him was a finely. A luxury wool, right, that he was really interested in. But it was also a feeling, right? A feeling of being liberated and in particular, if self liberating.

[Alison Stewart]

You mentioned in W magazine that you were invited to think differently as you translated your research from the book to text to the visual culture of an exhibition. What freedom and flexibility did this offer you as a curator as you chose to present the concept of black dandyism to a new audience?

[Monica Miller]

This, I mean, being asked to do this exhibition was really a kind of creative and imaginative experience for me. Kind of tapped into, I think, I don't know, a kind of. I mean, the ways in which I've been thinking about visual culture, right, within black communities and within black communities and cultures in the diaspora. So I was really able to use all of that. The translation really involved taking a book that was really based in literature and visual culture into an exhibition that's based in garments and based in garments. And when that. When the garments aren't there, which I can say a little bit more about later, when the garments aren't there, filling in that sartorial history with paintings, with prints, with decorative arts and film. So that translation was sort of like opening up my head, right? And then creating experience that people could kind of walk through.

[Alison Stewart]

Oh, well, give me an example.

[Monica Miller]

For example, at the very beginning of the exhibition, you meet a small case that has two coins in it, right? The coin on the left is a silver coin called a dandy. Pratt. That may be perhaps, yes or no, the origin of the word dandy. And what's interesting to me about that association is that means that dandyism is a kind of currency, right? A form of exchange associated with self worth and value, right? The coin next to it or is a pendant, actually, that's made by the contemporary Brooklyn based designers Seoul and Dynasty Ogun, who design under the name La Chanteur. And they created a. A kind of fantastical coin, right. That might have been currency that could have been used in the Caribbean, say, if colonialism hadn't existed or before colonialism arrived there. So in that case, you get a conversation, right, between value, worth, currency, the ability to kind of fashion a self. Right. And what that means and how much it's worth in some ways in two different systems, right? So that is a kind of theoretical concept in my book that was able to be material in that little case.

[Alison Stewart]

We're talking about the Met Costume Institute's new exhibition, Super Fine Tailoring Black Style, with guest curator Monica Miller. She's chair of Africana Studies at Barnard College. The show is broken into 12 thematic sections. Titles like Champion, Heritage, Beauty, Respectability. One of the areas is distinction. And in this section, you highlight figures.

From the Haitian Revolution, such as Toussaint l' Ouverture. How does his uniform and the uniforms of other soldiers reflect the revolution in Haiti and what it meant to people?

[Monica Miller]

I mean, I would take it back even a little bit before that, because when we think about dandyism and define dandyism, it's really about an intentionality in dress, right. In some ways, a discipline and practice in relationship to that. Sometimes it looks really sober and put together and it's actually related to, you know, historically is related to military uniforms. The ways in which those uniforms are kind of impeccably, impeccably styled and everything has to be absolutely perfect, right down to the shoeshine, right. Sometimes Zandeism looks very different, but also intentional, right. In terms of it being a little bit more flamboyant or spectacular. Right. What's important about that distinction section is we wanted to think we talk about distinction in different ways throughout the exhibition. But that moment, right. Is again related to what we were just talking about with Aladdo Equiano in that the Haitian Revolution is the origin of the first self determining black republic in the Western hemisphere. Again, a moment of self emancipation. So what's really important about those uniforms, even when we look at it in a painting depicting Toussaint l' Ouverture or the number of prints that are there, that are subsequent Haitian presidents and emperors, right. Is the way in which those black men are using the military uniform to not just signal a kind of self discipline and pride that's related to military prowess or masculinity, but really about doing that right? As a group and also as a self determining people. Right. That we think about, as, you know, as an example, right. For all of the Other black people that were involved in decolonization and desegregation movements that come afterwards. So it's about the occupation of this military uniform with a different, in some ways, purpose and pride that we're trying to really show in that section.

[Alison Stewart]

Another theme that is explored is the cosmopolitan. What does that mean?

[Monica Miller]

So that section is called cosmopolitanism. And what we're interested in in that section is really thinking about the way that travel, migration, sometimes forced travel, right? Sometimes forced migration or chosen, right. Travel and migration, again, contribute to this. To the way in which black identity changes over time and in different spaces, right? Each of the exhibition. Each of the exhibition sections are led into. Or you're led into them through a quotation by a black writer. So the person who is at the head of that section is Frantz Fanon. And he says, you know, in the world. You know, he says something like, in the world in which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself. So we really want to think about in that section and throughout the exhibition, because it's the last moment that you're in, right? Is about this endless creation of the self and the way that clothing, dress and power, sometimes self empowerment, sometimes, in some ways, power imposed from outside of the group is really a part of that conversation. And the way that style migrates, people migrate and how that changes over time.

[Alison Stewart]

One part of the show I understand is about respectability. And I was curious, does the show talk about respectability politics at all?

[Monica Miller]

Oh, absolutely, right. That's very, very much a part of. I mean, I don't think you can mention the word respectability without talking about respectability politics. And I think what. What I mean. And also dandyism's relationship to that. Right. I do think that in the show, we are really talking about a kind of dialectic between being fashioned and fashioning the self, but also understanding that fashioning the self is sometimes something you do for others, right. In order to get a hearing, in order to enter a particular room. Right. In order to. In order to get something done. And sometimes self fashioning is actually done much more for the self, right. It can be imposed, right. Respectability politics can impose particular style or way of being from the outside, or it can be something that is taken on as a strategy. So respectability politics are really important to this conversation because the exhibit really does think about tension, right? It is absolutely a celebration of contemporary black fashion designers, but it's also an acknowledgement of black history, which always includes tension.

[Alison Stewart]

What are some ways that the show explores or includes people of various Genders.

[Monica Miller]

Oh, yeah. So dandyism is historically, I think, historically a masculine or male activity, but did not in any way stay there because it's an exploration, right, of masculinity, I think, dress, power, comportment, right? And also always a. Always an exploration of gender. So there are a number of women, right, in the exhibition, as well as a number of kind of gender expansive people and stories, right? So that we really want to, again, think about dandyism or the dandy, right, As a figure that's really exploring boundaries, right? Especially when the dandy is racialized as black. Exploring boundaries of race and racialization. Boundaries of gender, right? Masculine, feminine, non binary sexuality, right. Heterosexuality, homosexuality, class, right? So all of those things are happening, like within. Within the dandy figure, right? As he or she moves through space. So one of the figures that we have in the exhibition would be Stormy Delaverie, who was a masculine presenting woman who wore suits, right. In the middle part of the 20th century, who led a musical revue called the Jewel Box Review that played in Harlem and particularly at the Apollo. And Storm A was a major LGBTQ activist in the middle part of the. In the middle part of the 20th century and involved, like, you know, signally involved in the Stonewall Uprising and used masculine clothing because that was how. That was how she expressed herself. That was her, you know, clothing can reveal or conceal an identity. And, you know, that was how that was how Stormrag presented.

[Alison Stewart]

We've seen all of the images from the Met Gala who provided a good conduit between the Met Gala and what this show is about.

[Monica Miller]

You know, I mean, I think. Yeah, I mean, I saw so many people doing that. One of the kind of great pleasures of this whole process for me has been, you know, when I wrote my book a long time ago, I. It was made. It was designed for an academic audience, right? And one of the things that has been both pleasurable and funny to me, right, is the way that this book has now made it into. Into a much more popular arena, right? Including the hands of some celebrities, which is. Which has been really wonderful. So for me, what I saw happening at the Met Gala was that people studied. I mean, I feel like, because it was associated with my book, like there was an assignment, right?

[Alison Stewart]

And they got the assignment.

[Monica Miller]

They got the assignment. They really did. And it was so beautiful. I mean, for me to see, right? So, for example, you know, Colman Domingo, he knew the assignment ahead of time, right? And really, in the way that he had. He had two different looks, right? One that was related to the Moors in Spain and another that was much more related to kind of zoot suiting and in the early part of the 20th century. So, you know, Coleman has been studying and actually adding to the discourse right. For a very long time. I really loved Jody Turner Smith. Her ensemble was a, was a tribute to a 19th century black woman in Paris who was an equestrian, a well known equestrian there. It was phenomenal. I mean it was just absolutely phenomenal. But people really studied and I was, I was really, I mean I was really, it was actually really moving.

[Alison Stewart]

My guest has been Monica Miller, a Barn College professor and Chair of Africana Studies. She is the guest curator of the Met's new exhibition titled Super Fine Tailoring Black Style. Thank you for being with us and thank you for bearing through the technical difficulties.

[Monica Miller]

Oh, thank you so much, Alison. I'm very happy to have had this time with you.

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