Monica Miller Reflects on Curating the Met & What Black Dandyism Means Now

Monica Miller, Barnard College professor and chair of the college’s Africana Studies Department, used to be sitting in her New York City place of business when she won a telephone name from Andrew Bolton, the curator in fee on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. He had one inquiry for Miller: Would she be the visitor curator for this yr’s Met Gala? Her 2009 guide, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, would function the basis for each the Gala’s theme and its exhibition, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.

“He was just like, ‘Hi, I’m Andrew Bolton,’ ” Miller recalled all the way through a up to date interview with W. “I was like, ‘What?!’ It was wild.” At first, the be offering used to be virtually too large for her to conceive. But she went directly to curate an exhibition that explores how taste has formed Black identities around the Atlantic diaspora—in particular within the U.S. and Europe—from the 18th century to these days.

The display is damaged into 12 thematic sections (with titles like “Champion,” “Heritage,” “Beauty,” “Respectability,” and “Cosmopolitanism”) exhibited throughout 3 centuries of clothes, equipment, works of art, and images—which all interpret dandyism as a cultured, an angle, and a type of resilience.

“ Translating the book from text and visual culture into an exhibition that centers garments and fashion design meant that I was invited to think differently,” mentioned Miller, who makes a speciality of African-American and American literature and cultural research.

Before Miller’s paintings may well be broadly preferred, on the other hand, she first needed to get in the course of the Met Gala, the Costume Institute’s spring 2025 birthday party, on May 5. Miller used to be keen to look which stars would carry the exhibition’s topics to existence—who would ascend the Met steps at the first Monday in May and go away us all gagged? Watching all of it spread thru her curatorial lens, she mentioned she used to be “deeply moved” via Jodie Turner-Smith’s placing customized Burberry ensemble (the glance used to be impressed via Selika Lazevski, a 19th-century Black equestrian who lived in Belle Epoque Paris).

“People studied, which I thought was so beautiful,” Miller mentioned of the historic analysis mirrored in lots of attendees’ appears. “As a professor, I was like, ‘Yes! You did the work. Well done.’ ”

During a time when educating Black historical past is increasingly more being contested—with some states shifting to prohibit important race principle—Miller is heartened to look early guests embracing wisdom thru type. “It was amazing to watch people in the exhibition and get a sense of what’s capturing their attention,” she mentioned of staring at other folks strolling in the course of the display for the primary time all the way through the Met Gala. “I’m happy that we’re able to do this on this scale, with this atmosphere of resilience, resistance, and joy. I’m hoping people are taking that spirit out of the space with them.”

The exhibition—which formally opens to the general public from May 10 and runs thru October 26—has brought about Miller to replicate deeply at the courting between the guide and the display, she mentioned. While they’re in detail hooked up, she perspectives them as “cousins.” Still, positive components have been non-negotiable in each. One used to be Julius Soubise—the primary Black dandy of the 18th century to depart a long-lasting mark on the idea that of dandyism.

“He understood that clothing had power,” Miller defined. She felt this concept of using type as a device for resistance—and the way dandyism served as a corrective pressure—used to be crucial to underscore on the Met.

“A lot of this exhibition has been like a gift,” she mentioned, including that interacting with the items featured in Superfine ushered in a brand new intensity of working out for the historical past she had studied for goodbye. Take one of the most display’s sections, “Distinction,” which options the Haitian normal and a distinguished chief of the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint Louverture. Although he receives just a transient point out within the ultimate bankruptcy of the guide, Miller explains that the staff’s exploration of modern artwork led them to his use of French army get dressed—later reflected via Haitian leaders— which each embodied and deconstructed Western authority thru type.

“We started to see that this kind of military dress is a big deal for a lot of contemporary fashion designers,” Miller mentioned, pointing to how Black menswear continues to reinterpret the army silhouette. Including Haiti’s innovative historical past, she added, allowed the exhibition to construct on what she started within the guide—demonstrating how clothes can deconstruct colonization and articulate new cultural ideas.

Of path, that premise echoes all over Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, highlighting the evolving function of dandyism. “I think people want to show—and particularly, Black people want to show—pride and presence right now,” Miller mentioned. “Maybe some of the tools that we show in the exhibition are useful in that way.”

Still, Miller’s paintings is a ways from over. Soon, she’ll be again within the very place of business the place she first took that decision from Bolton—the one who ended up defining her yr. She’ll go back to Barnard College within the fall to show a path hooked up to the exhibition. For now, she’s maximum having a look ahead to “being quiet for a little bit, doing laundry, and stocking my refrigerator.”

Lead symbol clockwise from most sensible left: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Lincoln Kirstein; Courtesy Internet Archive; Photo © Tyler Mitchell 2025; Photo © Thomas Hoepker/Magnum Photos; Photo © Tyler Mitchell 2025; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library; Photo © Tyler Mitchell 2025; Duke University Press Books.