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Met exhibition review: show-stopping peacockery and introspective origins
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style is an appreciation, cultural critique, and reclamation of Black designers who’ve been sidelined from larger fashion conversations
Photograph: Arturo Holmes/MG25/Getty Images for The Met Museum/VogueBut the show is not just about Black men with a surfeit of personal style – though there are many examples of just that in it – but also an examination of how they, from the 18th century to today, have leveraged clothing as a vehicle of self-expression, agency, personhood and more. Photograph: Arturo Holmes/MG25/Getty Images for The Met Museum/VogueTake the staid tailoring from the section dedicated to respectability, which are beautiful but equally emblems of how Black men used traditional suiting to signal to outsiders that they were deserving of consideration. Contrast that, then, with the swaggering work of Dapper Dan, a Harlem-based designer who took luxury goods from Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Fendi and other brands, and remade them in casual styles that appealed directly to Black tastes.
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