It’s the first Monday in May, which means it’s one of the biggest nights in all of fashion: the Met Gala, a benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
The annual event brings together the most famous and glamorous names in popular culture, many of whom informally compete for the most memorable outfit.
This year’s gala is inspired by an exhibition called “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” which is curated by Monica Miller, the author of a book on, among other things, Black Dandyism. Generally speaking, dandys refer to people — often men — who dress with an ostentatious style and flair.
ASU professor Mitchell Jackson joined The Show to discuss how the origins of Black Dandyism are much more nuanced.
Full conversation
MITCHELL JACKSON: It comes out of 18th, 19th century Black men specifically, who were dressing really like the masters or the people in power at that time as a kind of political statement and an assertion of their humanity and also their sense of style. So it is born out of protest actually.
SAM DINGMAN: That’s very interesting. I mean, I think of in my mind, the images that I conjure when I hear the word “dandy” are like Tom Wolfe or Eustace Tilley — the mascot, I guess would be the word, of the New Yorker. But I don’t really think of people like that as figures of defiance.
JACKSON: Like many words, things get co-opted and changed over time, but this actually started out as Black resistance. Frederick Douglass was considered a dandy. And if you think also of the jazz movement, like Miles Davis was a dandy.
And even later really connected to the Met Gala, André Leon Talley, who was like Anna Wintour, his right hand man. For so many years, he was probably the most famous contemporary Black dandy now.
DINGMAN: You know, we’ve been talking so far about the idea that ideologically, dressing in a certain way was a strong political statement. But let’s talk qualitatively a little bit. It strikes me that there must be a little bit of a tension there between looking to emulate the garments of people in power, but also, I would imagine, wanting to distinguish oneself from those people as well.
JACKSON: The way that Black man created zoot suits. The zoot suit were really, really loud colors. They were a lot more fabric. They sometimes came down to your kneecaps. I’m talking about the sport coats. They wore the spectator shoes, which were black and white and really loud colors. And so they really were attention grabbing. So I think that’s a great example of like taking on emulation, but then also extending it.
DINGMAN: I mean, is it fair to say that part of the defiance there is “Not only can we wear suits like you do, but they’re going to be bigger and louder and more of a statement than the suit that you wear”?
JACKSON: Yes. I agree. Yes.
DINGMAN: As I understand it, one of the heights of the expression of Black Dandyism was in Harlem during the middle of the 20th century. Is that accurate?
JACKSON: Yes. So we have the Harlem Renaissance, right? Where we get people like Langston Hughes was a Black dandy. In the early 20th century, we’re pre-civil rights. And so think about how the culture is demanding that Black people dress in a certain way just to be considered human. Civil rights movement leaders, they were all essentially dandies, right?
They were always dressed up. You seldom saw MLK in a shirt with no tie. And I think that was really mandated by where we were in history. It kind of changes after the 1960s. We get into the funk era with bellbottom pants and afros and bandanas, which I think comes out of the same impulses to reflect humanity, to be different. But it looks different.
DINGMAN: This seems like an important point that you’re making here that dandyism if people don’t know much about it, the first thing they might conjure in their minds is like a suit. But if I’m hearing you right, it’s more about a very strong sartorial statement that doesn’t necessarily have to be like a cocktail outfit.
JACKSON: Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, I think it’s changed. I think at its inception, it did mean suits. But I think a really great example is looking at the NBA — the forerunner in fashion in pro sports — and then looking at the other leagues. And if you look at those guys come through the tunnel, say someone like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, he might have on Timberlands unlaced with some big jeans in a fancy sweater.
But in my mind, that’s also dandyism because he’s making not only a fashion statement, but a political statement. The NBA fashion came out of resistance to David Stern’s dress code, right? So what we’re seeing now is also an expression of dandyism. I think maybe no more important of a symbol than that LeBron James is one of the hosts of the Met Gala this year.
DINGMAN: That’s interesting. I have to admit, I didn’t know that David Stern had instituted a dress code in the NBA. What was that dress code?
JACKSON: Well, this was in the hip-hop era, late 1990s. Hip-hop is probably the dominant music and certainly the dominant culture. So you got Jay-Z and DMX and Eminem. NBA players are now coming to the games in headbands with 7 or 8 chains on and baggy jeans and sweatpants and cornrow braids and just the hip-hop aesthetic.
David Stern instituted a dress code where the players had to wear suits. So if you look at early LeBron when he first came in the league, I want to say the dress code was still going. And it really forced guys to differentiate themselves but also to be dressed up.
So go back and look at Shaquille O’Neal’s early suits. They look like drapes. They almost got back to the zoot-suit era, really. That was bespoke. A lot of those guys were wearing — there would be a guy that comes to all the NBA rooms and the players are in the hotels, and measures them up and brings them suits.
And that was them, you know, both accepting that there is a dress code and then also pushing back like, “Oh, I’m going to get to this different fabric and I’m going to get the pink pinstripes, and I’m going to get the oversize suit with eight buttons instead of three buttons.” They were doing a lot of that.
DINGMAN: Yeah. It’s notable to me that in our conversation we’ve been talking, I think exclusively, about men. When we talk about the dandy in the American fashion tradition, is it a male-coded fashion tradition? Are there female dandies?
JACKSON: Yeah, I think it is a male coded phenomena. But I’ll say, I also think the Met Gala has Janelle Monet. So I think they recognize — I don’t know if you remember when Janelle Monet came out.
DINGMAN: Oh, yeah. The tuxedo.
JACKSON: She only wore black and white. That is really a harkening to the Black dandy.
DINGMAN: And it strikes me that Janelle Monet wearing the tuxedo in those early music videos is exactly in the same tradition that you were talking about at the beginning of our conversation of making a very strong sartorial statement that can’t be ignored.
JACKSON: Yeah. I’m going to give it to her: She’s hosting. She wore the clothes. Let’s call her the Black dandy.
