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The 2025 Met Gala dress code has been revealed with just three months to go before fashion’s biggest night of the year.
The star-studded event brings together Hollywood’s elite, music icons, and renowned designers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
On Tuesday (February 4), the Costume Institute announced that guests will be expected to dress in accordance with a concept labeled, “Tailored for You,” to compliment the new Spring 2025 exhibit, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.”
The annual fashion event, which takes place on the first Monday in May, will officially open the forthcoming exhibition focusing entirely on menswear for the first time in over 20 years with an emphasis on Black dandyism.
As per usual, attendees will arrive outside the museum to walk the carpeted steps in custom and haute couture garments that fit the dress code. This year’s guidelines will likely witness renditions of classic suiting from the double-breasted, kaleidoscopic design of a zoot suit to the more contemporary, baggy silhouette typically seen on Willy Chavarria’s runway.
The dress code is “purposefully designed to provide guidance and incite creative interpretation,” according to Vogue, meaning guests should show up in garments that reflect their individual tastes and style.
While the full guest list has not yet been released, viewers can expect to see the gala hosts — Colman Domingo, A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, LeBron James, Lewis Hamilton, and of course, Anna Wintour — as well as a fresh committee comprised of celebrities across different arts industries and sports.
The committee this year will include Simone Biles and her husband Jonathan Owens, Dapper Dan, Doechii, Edward Enniful, Ayo Ediebiri, Jeremy O Harris, André 3000, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Grace Wales Bonner, Jordan Casteel, Regina King, Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee, Rashid Johnson, Audra McDonald, Jeremy Pope, Angel Reese, Janelle Monáe, Sha’Carri Richardson, USHER, Olivier Rousteing, Tyla, and Kara Walker.
All attendees will be served a gourmet dinner prepared by Chef Kwame Onwuachi. The gala decor will be designed by Cy Gavin, Raúl Àvila, and Derek McLane.
The 2025 Met exhibit theme was announced back in October 2024 during a press conference held inside the museum. Andrew Bolton, the head curator for the Costume Institute, explained how the exhibition draws inspiration from Monica L. Miller’s 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. The museum’s exhibit will feature “garments, paintings, photographs, and more — all exploring the indelible style of Black men in the context of dandyism, from the 18th-century through present day.”
Miller noted that dandies are typically thought of as the men from the 18th century who “paid distinct and sometimes excessive attention to dress.” She also pointed out that dandyism can be both an identity and a concept.
“In the 18th century, dandyism could be both a vehicle of enslavement and liberation. It was also imposed upon and quickly taken up by Black people swept up into the political realities of the time,” she said at the press conference. “This exhibiton, ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,’ explores the dialectic between being dandified and taking on dandyism as a means for self-fashioning. In the show, Black dandyism is a sartorial style that asks questions about identity, representation, mobility, race, class, gender, sexuality, power.”
The exhibit will be organized into 12 sections: Ownership, Presence, Distinction, Disguise, Freedom, Champion, Respectability, Jook, Heritage, Beauty, Cool, and Cosmopolitanism.
Bolton and Miller have been working with a team of artists including Torkwase Dyson, Tyler Mitchell, Tanda Francis, and special consultant Iké Udé.