The Costume Institute’s spring 2025 exhibition will present a cultural and historical examination of the Black dandy, from the figure’s emergence in Enlightenment Europe during the 18th century to today’s incarnations in cities around the world.

Inspired by Guest Curator Monica L. Miller’s 2009 book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, the exhibition will explore the importance of sartorial style to the formation of Black identities in the Atlantic diaspora. Historically, the term dandy was used to describe someone—often a man—who is extremely devoted to style and approaches it as a discipline. Dandyism was initially imposed on Black men in 18th-century Europe as the Atlantic slave trade and an emerging culture of consumerism created a trend of fashionably dressed, or dandified, servants. Dandyism offered Black people an opportunity to use clothing, gesture, irony, and wit to transform their given identities and imagine new ways of embodying political and social possibilities.

The exhibition will tell the Black dandy’s story over time through a range of media, such as garments and accessories, drawings and prints, and paintings, photographs, film excerpts, and more. Taken together, these narratives offer a history and description of Black dandyism as a discrete phenomenon that reflects broader issues of power and race in the Black diaspora.

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