Guided by the Costume Institute’s exhibition theme “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” 2025’s Met Gala saw celebs show up and show out on the grand staircase of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This year’s first Monday in May was a celebration of the Black dandy’s impact, which made for menswear galore and works of sartorial precision donned by entertainers like Doechii and Zendaya, in line with the fête’s dress code Tailored for You. The gala’s coinciding exhibition at the Met was curated by author Monica L. Miller and rooted in her 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity.
Though Miller traces the origins of the Black dandy all the way back to the early enslavement of Africans in 17th-century London, the art of Black dandyism really hit a stride during the Harlem Renaissance. The New York City neighborhood established itself as a wellspring of African American literature, art, and music as African American cultural luminaries in the area collectively challenged society’s notion about what it meant to be Black in America. Dandyism played a significant role in this interrogation. Gathering spots like ballrooms and juke joints, salons, and even neighborhood streets became places for the Black dandy to parade their fashions and define their own place within a society that broadly sought to disenfranchise them.
What is Black dandyism?
The practice of dandyism isn’t just about wearing beautiful clothing. “Historically, the term dandy was used to describe someone—often a man—who is extremely devoted to aesthetics and approached it as a lifestyle,” Miller said in a promotional video for this year’s exhibition. The dandy deliberately uses fashion to express a distinct personality, provoking society’s definitions of gender, sex, and class. (Think Oscar Wilde and Andre Leon Talley.) Cognizant of the world’s impositions on their identity, the Black dandy intentionally uses fashion as a tool to control their own narrative, skirting the boundaries between not just gender, sex, and class, but race too, presenting a persona that is not easily boxed into traditional categories. Through style, “gesture, irony, and wit,” dandies “negotiate their own status” and transcend the stereotypes associated with their Black bodies, per Miller. The style is a celebration of subverting norms, so naturally women like Harlem Renaissance performer Gladys Bentley and model-slash-singer Grace Jones, as well as nonbinary folks like entertainer Janelle Monáe, also easily fit into this aesthetic.
Below, we take a look through a few venues frequented by Harlem dandies to flaunt their style.
Ballrooms, speakeasies, and juke joints
New York’s music scene was a crucial part of the Harlem Renaissance. Ballrooms, speakeasies, and juke joints took center stage. A number of massive dance halls became centers for nightlife, some with multiple floors and casinos where the world’s most talented jazz musicians, like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Chick Webb—backed by their bands—could be found on any given night, dreaming up new forms of jazz and dance. Among these spots was the Savoy, a glamorous space which occupied an entire city block and was outfitted with Art Deco aesthetics and a colossal dance floor. The Lafayette Theater, a Renaissance-style venue with 1,500 seats, was another elegant venue where dandies could often be found dressed to the nines.
These were two of the very few big integrated venues in Harlem, but, as a result of the scarcity of such spots, speakeasies and juke joints flourished. Places like Harry Hansberry’s Clam House on 133rd Street, where transgressive queer performer Gladys Bentley sang and played piano in a white three-piece tuxedo, dotted Harlem. These clandestine spots were tucked away in the basement of a town house or eatery or sometimes deep inside a retail establishment. There would be food, smoking, illicit drinking (during Prohibition), and live jazz music. And although they were smaller and less formal than the large venues, the speakeasies and juke joints were no less of a stage for the dandy. “This was a moment where people really kind of had fun with their fashion,” art historian Richard J. Powell said. “Zoot suits, and dresses with fringes on them, and feathers, if you were inclined that way.”
Literary salons
African American literature also flourished during the Harlem Renaissance. Acclaimed American writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston would often hold readings and parties in the parlor rooms of their residences. The apartments at Sugar Hill’s 409 Edgecombe Avenue were home to countless musicians, activists, and scholars, including W.E.B. Du Bois, who was known for hosting all-night soirées. Among the most famous of the salons were those held at the West 136th Street townhome of A’Lelia Walker, philanthropist and daughter of Madame C.J. Walker (who is credited as the country’s first self-made woman millionaire). An invitation to the four-story dwelling, which combined two town houses, was one of the most coveted tickets at the time. “A’Lelia Walker had an apartment that held perhaps a hundred people. She would usually issue several hundred invitations to each party,” Langston Hughes wrote in his 1940 autobiography The Big Sea. These lavish parties attracted Harlem’s creative class and created a safe space for Black dandies to live fully and authentically.
Urban streets
The reputation of New York City’s streets as the personal runway for all who walk them is not new. Fashionable New Yorkers have, for centuries, used them as a venue to communicate their sense of style and status to others. Unsurprisingly, this held true for Harlemites living through the area’s Renaissance. As Miller explains in Slaves to Fashion, the all-black suits worn by the men and the all-white outfits of women and children during the Silent Protest Parade of 1917 spoke volumes; thousands of African Americans marched down Fifth Avenue, intentionally speechless, to make a statement about their identities in a society that often refused to recognize them as legitimate citizens.
On an average day, the blocks around 135th Street in Harlem were where dandyism was truly on display. Artists like Miguel Covarrubias and Charles Henry Altston documented the scene through their work. “On a Sunday you’d stroll along Seventh Avenue in your best clothes and look over the passing parade of beautiful gals,” Altston said. “The 135th Street corner was our meeting place.”
