Bishme Cromartie won’t walk the Met Gala’s red carpet this Monday, but two of his designs will. Worn by women interviewing guests on the carpet, he envisions these pieces moving through a sea of flashbulbs, commentary, and couture as he watches from elsewhere, rooting for a moment that carries both weight and wonder.
“It’s a dream to one day be able to attend the event,” said the designer. “Although I won’t be there physically, at least my garments will be able to represent myself and other designers who look like me.”
This year’s theme, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” takes its cue from “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity,” Monica Miller’s 2009 book that traces how Black communities in the United States and Europe used fashion to carve out space, power, and identity in a world designed to deny them all three. Both the Met Gala and the Costume Institute’s “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” exhibition center on Black dandyism as both a look and strategy that turned getting dressed into a form of resistance. Think sharp tailoring, bold silhouettes, and quiet swagger wielded as armor, all rooted in a centuries-old lineage shaped by African and European traditions.
For designers like Cromartie, whose career arc from “Project Runway” to dressing A-listers has felt at once rapid and hard-won, the moment offers a kind of spotlight that carries both the moment holds both personal excitement and a deeper meaning. “This year’s theme is not only truly beautiful but it’s part of my history and the history that I continue to create through my garments,” he said. “This moment is bigger than me.”
More Than a Look, More Than a Moment
For Patience Torlowei, the moment carried memory and meaning. One of her designs, a richly textured kaftan once worn by her late friend and muse, fashion godfather André Leon Talley, will appear in the exhibit. Fashion in Black communities, particularly in her native Nigeria, has always gone beyond utility or trend, she insisted, with clothing functioning as a personal archive, cultural inheritance, and a way to speak without words.
“I hope we see unapologetic design by strong Black eyes on the carpet on Monday,” said Torlowei. “But then I don’t want us to be pigeonholed to just this event.”
Similarly, for Bianca Saunders, the significance cuts deep. A graduate of the Royal College of Art’s prestigious menswear program, she built her label on reimagining masculinity through tailoring that moves, silhouettes that soften, and a steady dialogue with heritage. This year, her work will live grace the Met Gala carpet and the exhibit.
Seeing a theme so aligned with her design ethos honored on one of fashion’s biggest global stages felt powerful, she reflected. However, alongside honor runs a deeper concern. Behind the scenes, Saunders revealed, conversations among her Black peers had already begun about responsibility, how to ensure this moment doesn’t flatten a nuanced lineage into a single, simplistic aesthetic.
“What hasn’t been spoken about enough is how often Black designers are called on for cultural relevance,” said Saunders, “but not always given the infrastructure or long-term investment to thrive.”
Presence Isn’t Necessarily Power
Designer Aaron Potts feels that contradiction, too. He wasn’t invited to contribute, and neither were many of his peers, he said. Black designers who, like him, whose work has long championed gender play and fluidity, two signature pillars of Black Dandyism and its subversive, queer foundation.
“We know that there will be lots of Black faces attending, but we don’t know what they will be wearing,” said Potts. “My friends and I were hoping this would be the moment to elevate less well-known, deserving Black designers on a world stage.”
He hopes that Black celebrities, models, and entertainers especially will take this opportunity to “willingly and intentionally lock arms with their Black designer peers,” given how often Black designers have used their own platforms to uplift them throughout their careers. Instead, he worried, most have likely stuck with the same legacy brands, continuing a cycle of missed opportunities.
“Many of us [designers] have been the only Black voices in the rooms, sometimes in hostile environments, risking our careers to speak up for, defend, and push for casting opportunities for our people,” Potts explained. “We hope that these feelings and actions are reciprocated.”
While Potts questioned how the theme aligned with the designers being spotlighted, Frederick Anderson focused on the narrative being built around it.
“I’m not sure that our first exhibit should be talking about a style derivative from whites dressing up slaves,” he said. That framing, he explained, keeps circling back to trauma as a prerequisite for recognition. “We can come from the greatness that we’ve done, and not that we had to take something that was put upon us and turn it into something wonderful.”
To Anderson, Black Dandyism matters, but it isn’t the full picture. Hip-hop, the Harlem Renaissance, everyday elegance in Black communities, those are all part of the global style archive, too.
A shared truth rang loud through every conversation: Being recognized and being empowered are not one in the same. The designers I spoke to didn’t just want to be in the room. They wanted a new blueprint, one that moves beyond momentary visibility toward long-haul equity. One that doesn’t rely on borrowed stages, but builds new ones.
As Anderson put it, the story that matters most now is the one that will outlive Monday night. “It’s less about who’s in the room,” he said. “I’m more interested in the actual exhibit because millions of people are going to see that. And this story is going to have legs.”
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