After three a long time as a jobbing actor, Colman Domingo lastly ascended to the Hollywood A-list in 2023 off the again of Rustin, a biopic of Bayard Rustin, an adviser to Martin Luther King Jr and civil rights icon. However whereas his efficiency was sensible, Domingo’s meteoric rise was additionally all the way down to one thing else: his masterful embrace of Black dandyism.
Having honed his trademark tight trousers and unbuttoned shirts ready tables in San Francisco, on the crimson carpet he set himself aside in fits with Nehru collars, bow ties, dramatic cloaks and glowing brooches. “I don’t simply put on garments, I put on tales,” Domingo informed GQ forward of his look on the Golden Globes in January, earlier than stepping out in a black Valentino mohair wool tuxedo paired with a polka-dot silk shirt and a peacock plume brooch, all chosen to evoke “being on the centre of a three-ring circus” – a playful nod to the performative nature of awards season.
As the present poster boy for Black dandyism, it’s becoming that Domingo will co-chair this 12 months’s Met Gala, the theme of which is Superfine: Tailoring Black Fashion. Impressed by Monica L. Miller’s 2009 e book, Slaves to Trend: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Id, the gala and the accompanying exhibition are a celebration of the strategic use of trend by Black males all through historical past, which the e book traces from slavery and colonialism via political and cultural actions such because the Harlem renaissance and the civil rights motion of the Sixties, as much as Twenty first-century icons together with André 3000 and Janelle Monáe. Dandyism isn’t just about impeccably tailor-made fits and thoroughly chosen equipment – though it may be each of these issues. It’s about clothes that intentionally evokes political and historic concepts whereas showcasing the wearer’s distinct charisma.
Talking to Miller over Zoom from her workplace at Barnard Faculty in New York Metropolis, the place she is professor of Africana research, she’s clearly nonetheless processing the sudden flip of occasions that introduced her analysis to the crimson carpet of the Met Gala, the Anna Wintour-organised, star-studded extravaganza extensively thought of trend’s largest evening of the 12 months. “I received a chilly name saying, ‘We’d love to speak about the potential for turning your e book into an exhibition,’” says Miller, who admits to being floored by the invitation: “Even now, with the exhibition coming collectively, it nonetheless appears like a miracle,” she says.
The time period “superfine” is borrowed from the memoir of Olaudah Equiano, an enslaved West African who, after buying his freedom in 1766, spent “above eight kilos of my cash for a swimsuit of superfine garments to bounce with at my freedom”. Past a easy dedication to flamboyant dressing, the title displays the deeper significance of Black dandy model as each “imposition and liberation”, preserving a pressure between politics and aesthetics. “It’s a sartorial model that asks questions on identification, illustration, mobility – race, class, gender, sexuality and energy,” says Miller. It’s a well timed selection by the Met, given we discover ourselves in what Miller euphemistically refers to as “this extremely political second”, additionally noting how the previous 15 years have seen Black tradition – and designers – play an more and more central function in western trend. “There’s a way during which the exhibition is a distillation of the actually necessary strikes Black designers have made lately,” she says.
Miller first turned intrigued by Black dandyism whereas learning with American thinker Cornel West in graduate faculty, studying WEB Du Bois’s The Souls of Black People, a set of sociological essays exploring the Black expertise in early Twentieth-century America. When she found a footnote about Du Bois being caricatured unflatteringly as a dandy, she was puzzled. “I didn’t perceive why that was a nasty factor,” she says. “He was extremely, like, impeccably dressed.”
Du Bois rejected the label: “He was upset about it as a result of the first picture of the Black dandy got here from blackface minstrelsy.” However Miller noticed one thing extra important. “If we take into consideration dandyism from a very totally different perspective,” she says, “the model challenges social hierarchies by subverting expectations of how Black males ought to current themselves. What was as soon as used to mock Black folks turned their instrument for resistance and self-expression.”
The exhibition is organised round key ideas that illuminate totally different aspects of Black dandyism, together with most notably “possession”, or the distinction between “being owned and ‘proudly owning it’”. This pressure between being dandified by others and adopting dandyism as self-expression runs all through Black historical past. Miller cites the instance of Josephine Baker, who rose from being an unique dancer to international icon of the jazz age via strategic manipulation of her picture. “She was capable of defy that expectation and take management of it,” says Miller. The power to govern societal expectations was not simply necessary for well-known figures, however marginal ones too, akin to runaway enslaved folks. “Adverts for absconding enslaved individuals would come with the garments they took; even their enslavers knew how necessary garments had been of their try and cross for a free man.”
Because the Twentieth century progressed, the daring clothes of Black dandyism turned a strategy to discover the complicated relationships between race, masculinity and sexuality. It’s right here that the excellence between Black dandyism and white dandyism – lengthy related to European queer communities – is most obvious. Requested about what distinguishes the 2, Miller is provocative: “I do imagine that Black folks and their identities have at all times been queer. They’re odd, ill-fitting and problematic, no matter sexuality.”
Black ladies have additionally performed a key function in shaping dandyism, together with Harlem Renaissance blues singer Gladys Bentley, along with her trademark white satin swimsuit and high hat, and Grace Jones, who ceaselessly wears masculine clothes, such because the Armani swimsuit jacket she dons on the quilt of her album Nightclubbing. Miller notes how the footprint of dandy aesthetics is obvious with political figures akin to Kamala Harris or Michelle Obama. “They’re not solely carrying fits, but in addition enthusiastic about Black designers, like Christopher John Rogers,” says Miller. “It’s a feminist factor, however they’re additionally enthusiastic about the blackness of it – selecting accessible silhouettes as a method of signalling, ‘Sure, I’m ready of energy, however I’m additionally only a individual.’” In essence, the alternatives serve a twin objective: the acquainted, relatable silhouettes (akin to Michelle Obama’s signature belted appears) create a visible bridge with on a regular basis People, whereas the collection of Black designers makes an announcement about cultural illustration.
Intentionality is a constant thread all through Miller’s conception of Black dandyism. It’s maybe most putting now, at a time when distinguished white males, akin to Elon Musk, appear virtually slovenly regardless of their extremely formidable political initiatives. “A part of the stress,” says Miller, “associated to Black folks and their relationship to trend is that it appears required for Black folks in energy, or Black individuals who need sure types of energy, to decorate in a selected sort of method.” In different phrases, Black persons are required to decorate well to be taken significantly, whereas white males are afforded the privilege of scruffiness.
As Met Gala company put together to interpret the theme on the Met steps subsequent month, Miller hopes attenders and viewers will recognize the deep historic significance of what they’re seeing. “It’s about understanding that the current second is at all times knowledgeable by each historical past and our aspirations.” In right this moment’s divided political panorama, Black dandyism continues to be a robust assertion – a method of claiming area, asserting dignity and imagining options to the current. In Domingo, A$AP Rocky and their fellow co-chairs, we’ll see the newest incarnation of this custom – one which transforms the crimson carpet right into a canvas for exploring the continued, unfinished enterprise of what it means to be seen whereas Black, in America and world wide.
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