This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free.
Last week, I got a DM from a Show Notes reader named Marcel Ames. Ames owns a menswear brand in Virginia called X of Pentacles that specializes in jaunty silk neckwear and Neapolitan tailoring; he and I connected back in 2018 for a story I was working on at the time. (The story was about, of all things, a micro-boom in fashion labels started by former cops, soldiers, and spies. Ames was an aspiring Richmond PD officer before diving into menswear.)
Ames wanted to know my thoughts on the next Met Costume Institute exhibition, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, which was announced on Wednesday morning to great fanfare. The Costume Institute's big annual spring show always generates plenty of buzz, something to do with the fact that it opens with a fundraiser known as the Met Gala, but this one already feels different. Superfine will examine the under-studied yet deeply relevant figure of the Black dandy, and how Black men have used clothing, specifically formal clothing, to define themselves throughout history. It's the first time the Costume Institute is devoting a wing to the topic of race, and the first show focused exclusively on menswear in 20 years. (Should we agree to call this one the Men Gala?)
I told Ames that I was thrilled that menswear, usually something of a plus-one on fashion's biggest night, will be firmly in the spotlight on the first Monday in May. The Gala's co-chairs are a murderer's row of Black cultural titans who will set a high bar on the red carpet: Pharrell Williams, A$AP Rocky, Lewis Hamilton, and Colman Domingo, with LeBron James serving as an honorary chair. And I'm excited that the show is connected to the world outside of the museum's Fifth Avenue edifice. Compare that to last year's blockbuster, which highlighted "sleeping beauty" gowns from the Met archive.