See Inside the Pages of ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,’ the Companion Book for This Year’s Met Gala

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From Rihanna and Zendaya, to Madonna and Diana Ross, this year’s Met Gala brought no shortage of star power and head-turning looks to the red carpet on the First Monday in May in New York City.

This year’s event was themed around the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s spring 2025 exhibition, titled “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” The exhibit explores the history of Black fashion, with a focus on menswear, suiting and dandyism. Celebs like Colman Domingo and Pharrell exemplified the theme on the red carpet, joined by fellow Met Gala co-chairs Lewis Hamilton and A$AP Rocky.

Now, fashion fans can explore the theme in even more detail with the release of the official 2025 Met Gala book, which bears the same name as the museum exhibition.

NEW RELEASE

Superfine: Tailoring Black Style

$75.00

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” is being released as a bound, hardcover edition on June 3, but you can pre-order the book now on Amazon.

The 372-page tome traces the origins of Black fashion, dating back to early representation in art and literature across Africa and Europe. As more Black voices moved to the Americas, so did new codes of dressing. As the accompanying publisher notes state, “‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ traces the complex and vibrant legacy of menswear across three centuries of Black culture—from today’s hip-hop aesthetic and popular street trends, through its use during the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights movement as a symbol of creative and political agency, to its surprising origins as an imposed uniform for servants and enslaved people.”

The pages include tributes to prominent African-American figures spanning sports, entertainment and politics, with photos of now-historical attire seen on people like Frederick Douglass, Alexandre Dumas, Muhammad Ali and André Leon Talley, among others.

Accompanying the photos, sketches and contextual anecdotes is a new photo essay from Tyler Mitchell, who famously became the first Black photographer to shoot the cover of Vogue, when he photographed Beyoncé for the magazine’s September 2018 issue. Mitchell also showcases looks from contemporary Black designers like Virgil Abloh, Pharrell, LaQuan Smith and Grace Wales Bonner.

“Organized by key characteristics of dandyism that resonate across time, including presence, distinction, disguise, and respectability, this fresh interpretation of a centuries-old aesthetic draws on prominent Black voices in fashion, literature, and art,” the book description states, “and shows how the evolution of dandy style inspired new visions of Black masculinity that use the power of clothing and dress as a means of self-expression.”

The new book was written by Monica L. Miller, a professor and chair of Africana Studies at Barnard College, alongside Costume Institute Curator in Charge, Andrew Bolton. Miller is a guest curator for this year’s exhibit, and it was her 2009 book, “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity,” that helped to inspire this year’s Met Gala theme.

THE ORIGINAL INSPIRATION

Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity

$22.46

$30.95

27% off

Published by Duke University Press, “Slaves to Fashion” has returned to number one on Amazon’s fashion books chart, on the heels of the Met Gala.

“Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” meantime, is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York from May 10 to October 26, 2025. You can also order the hardcover coffee table book on Amazon here.