The Met Gala’s reputation as fashion’s biggest night is well-deserved. For decades, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute has opened its blockbuster spring exhibition with a benefit that has since morphed into a global spectacle all its own. Millions of people around the world anticipate the first Monday of May to see how their favorite stars and fashion designers collaborate to make magic on the red carpet.
This year, we’re set to witness men’s fashion’s biggest night, with a Costume Institute show focused on menswear. The exhibition, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” tells the story of the Black dandy, the rakish figure who turns suiting and formalwear into his own waggish coat of armor. He’s an archetype familiar to anyone who admires the work of the stylish Black trailblazers who define modern culture.
This fashion portfolio brings together over 30 of those trailblazers—actors, musicians, designers, athletes, artists, and more—to pay homage to the Black dandy, styled by renowned image architect Law Roach and shot by celebrated photographer Tyler Mitchell. Here, Roach takes us behind the scenes of this monumental project. —Samuel Hine
Church was my first fashion show, and my grandmother was my first client. She is one of the reasons that I fell in love with fashion and style. My grandfather was a pastor, so I went to a Baptist church in Chicago. My cousins and I had clothes we could play outside in, then we had church clothes. There were always eccentrics in church. I got really familiar with the word peacocking—and the male peacock is the one with the beautiful feathers, the vibrant colors.
When I was growing up, André Leon Talley was the epitome of a modern-day dandy. I looked at him as an icon and understood the way he spoke about clothes, his love for clothes and tailoring, and being eccentric.
Am I a dandy? I think so! I do live the lifestyle, and there’s an eccentric part to my persona.
I can barely describe the emotion of the shoot days for this project. I looked at every single pairing as a vignette of its own. Everything is its own story. It is the only way I can work. I cannot just throw clothes on people. One of my favorite pictures is of Jon Batiste and Myha’la and Jeremy Pope, who were like the dandies the way people automatically see dandies. And then there’s Tyson Beckford with the Yankees fitted hat on and Noah Lyles as this kind of cool younger brother/older brother dynamic—to me, they were like Morehouse men.