Superfine

This exploration of Black dandy fashion and its representation in art and literature highlights the vibrant, complicated legacy of a recognizable yet constantly shifting style, from its origins in Enlightenment Europe to the contemporary art and fashion worlds
 
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style explores the history of a style characterized by bold, refined fashions, provocative excess, and a defining relationship with Black masculinity across three centuries. This publication interrogates the origins of the style as an imposed uniform for Black servants in wealthy eighteenth-century European households, through its use as a statement of artistic and political agency during the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement, to the present day, when dandyism is also an essential component of hip-hop aesthetics and popular street wear. Sections highlight qualities of dandy style that resonate across time, including cosmopolitanism, caricature, disguise, ease, ownership, and presence. The book features new photography of garments, accessories, and artworks from about 1700 to the present, as well as current voices in fashion, literature, and art writing on these objects. Including works by celebrated contemporary fashion designers, as well as early designs by anonymous makers, this engaging publication demonstrates how Black style arbiters used the dandy’s signature tools—clothing, gesture, and wit—to break down boundaries and fashion new cultural and social realities.
 
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press
 
Exhibition Schedule:
 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(May 10–October 26, 2025)