In recent years, the theme of the Costume Institute’s major spring exhibition—and consequently, the Met Gala—has often drawn from literary sources, such as Susan Sontag’s Notes on Camp or the works of Virginia Woolf. But the 2025 exhibition, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, stands out for its deeply literary roots. The show, which explores the concept of the Black dandy, is based on guest curator Monica Miller’s 2009 book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity (originally her Harvard English literature PhD dissertation). Its structure is also inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s 1934 essay Characteristics of Negro Expression. The exhibition features the voices (and clothing) of an extraordinary array of Black writers, artists, and trailblazers, including abolitionists like Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass, thinkers such as Maya Angelou and Ta-Nehisi Coates, and cultural icons from Miles Davis and Muhammad Ali to André Leon Talley and Virgil Abloh.

For Miller, collaborating with the Costume Institute’s longtime head curator, Andrew Bolton, was a joy—especially in placing well-known figures into a fresh and unexpected context: the cultural history of Black style. Take, for example, the final section of Superfine, titled Cosmopolitanism, which opens with a quote from philosopher Frantz Fanon: “In the world in which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself.”

“Fanon wrote extensively about Blackness as a mask,” Miller tells Vogue. “He explored the tension between surface and depth, the psychology of how people perceive Blackness, and the ways Black individuals navigate social, cultural, and political spaces. His work is foundational—but people might not expect to see him in this context. Meanwhile, someone like Miles Davis, quoted in another section, spoke powerfully about coolness, while Frederick Douglass offered profound insights on respectability.”

Hurston, a writer Miller—a professor at Barnard College—teaches frequently (not least because Hurston was Barnard’s first Black graduate), also plays a key role. Her eclectic work as an anthropologist and folklorist aligns with the exhibition’s goal, as Miller puts it, not to rigidly define Black dandyism but to “offer different avenues and entry points” for exploring the politics of Black dress.

In that spirit, ahead of the exhibition’s May 10 opening, consider the reading list below—provided by Miller—as a springboard for Superfine or a primer for its rich accompanying catalog. Browse, get inspired, and we’ll see you at the museum soon.

### Books by and about figures featured in the exhibition:
– All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes – $15
– Between the World and Me – $26
– Black Skin, White Masks – $15
– The Chiffon Trenches – $17
– Henry Ossian Flipper, the Colored Cadet at West Point – $21
– I Put a Spell on You – $18
– The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano – $10
– Miles: The Autobiography – $14
– Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass – $12
– Rockin’ Steady: A Guide to Basketball & Cool – $15
– Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom – $18
– Their Eyes Were Watching God – $17
– Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments – $15

### Books providing background for the exhibition:
– Abloh-Isms – $16
– Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy – $20
– Ali: A Life – $21
– A.L.T.: A Memoir – $33
– Ann Lowe: AmericaHere’s the rewritten list in clear and natural English:

– Couturier – $55 (Rizzoli)
– The Autobiography of Malcolm X – $9 (Bookshop)
– Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool – $54 (Amazon)
– Behind the Scenes: Or Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House – $10 (Bookshop)
– Bespoke: The Master Tailors of Savile Row – $40 (W.W. Norton)
– The Birth of Cool: Style Narratives of the African Diaspora – $156 (Bookshop)
– Black: A Celebration of a Culture – $33 (Bookshop)
– Black Designers in American Fashion – $37 (Amazon)
– François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, circa 1800 (Photo: Heritage Images/Getty Images)
– Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style – $46 (Bookshop)
– The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution – $16 (Amazon)
– Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity – $23 (Bookshop)
– Black Style – $12 (Amazon)
– Dandy Lion: Black Dandy and Street Style – $33 (Bookshop)
– Dandy Style: 250 Years of British Men’s Fashion – $35 ($30 on Amazon)
– Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem – $18 (Bookshop)
– Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girl’s Love Letter to the Power of Fashion – $13 (Amazon)
– Ebony: Covering Black America – $56 (Bookshop)
– Equiano, the African – $20 (Bookshop)
– Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric – $21 (Yale University Press)
– Fashion and Jazz: Dress, Identity and Subcultural Improvisation – $52 (Bookshop)
– Fab 5 Freddy and LL Cool J in 1988 (Photo: Getty Images)
– Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion – $19 (Bookshop)
– Free Stylin’: How Hip Hop Changed the Fashion Industry – $78 (Bookshop)
– The Garies and Their Friends – $23 (Bookshop)
– Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm – $60 (Bookshop)
– Horse: A Novel – $18 (Bookshop)
– How to Build a Fashion Icon: Notes on Confidence from the World’s Only Image Architect – $26 (Bookshop)
– Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History – $93 (Bookshop)
– In the Black Fantastic – $21 (Amazon)
– Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion – $26 (Amazon)
– Invisible Man – $16 (Bookshop)
– Kwame Brathwaite: Black Is Beautiful – $42 (Bookshop)
– Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul – $32 (Bookshop)
– Cicely Tyson in 1973 (Photo: Getty Images)
– Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh – $33 (Bookshop)
– Muse: Cicely Tyson and Me: A Relationship Forged in Fashion – $19 (Amazon)
– Negroland: A Memoir – $19 (Penguin Random House)
– On His Royal Badness: The Life and Legacy of Prince’s Fashion – $14 (Amazon)
– Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts – $78 (Bookshop)
– Pictures and Progress: Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity – $36 (Bookshop)
– Poems: 1968-2020 – $22 (Amazon)
– Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface – $38 (Bookshop)
– A Small Nation of People: W. E. B. Du Bois and African American Portraits of Progress – $15 (Harper Collins)
– The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations – $18 (Bookshop)
– Style File: The World’s Most Elegantly Dressed – $65 ($29 on Amazon)
– Stylin’: African-American Expressive Culture, from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit – $44 (Bookshop)
– Supreme Models: Iconic Black Women Who Revolutionized Fashion – $56 (Bookshop)
– Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech – $74 (Bookshop)
– A Visible Man: A Memoir – $30 (Penguin Random House)
– Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity – $45 ($15 on Amazon)
– Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style – $25 (Bookshop)

Let me know if you’d like any further refinements!