The 2025 Met Gala will go forward tonight with many A-list celebrities in attendance dressed in their wildest outfits to celebrate this year’s official theme: “Black Dandyism.”
Inspired by Monica Miller’s book “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity,” the new exhibit will center on black style, especially menswear, from the 18th century to present.
The annual fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute will continue its longstanding tradition of being an over-the-top extravagant and slightly controversial event for celebrities to show off their fashion. Even celebrity fans often roll their eyes at what seems like a blatant display of wealth.
For example, tickets cost $75,000 each.
But this year, major news outlets like The New York Times are painting the Met Gala as a means of “resistance” against the Trump administration, especially since the president ventured into the world of the arts by taking over the Kennedy Center earlier this year.
NYT noted that this year’s show has special “relevance” as it’s “devoted for the first time entirely to designers of color” and “focuses on the way black men have used fashion as a tool of self-actualization, revolution and subversion throughout American history and the black diaspora.”
“This feels way bigger than just fashion,” Louis Pisano, a cultural critic and the writer of the newsletter Discoursted, told the outlet, mentioning how the theme was an intentional choice. “Putting black style front and center sends a real message.”
Co-chairs include Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, ASAP Rocky, Lewis Hamilton, Colman Domingo, and Pharrell Williams. LeBron James is an honorary chair.
“It’s important that we don’t sit this one out,” Pisano said. “Not when black fashion is finally being centered in an institution that has historically excluded it.”
“I’m already bracing for the conservative backlash once they pay attention to it, and that’s why it’s especially important that people show up,” he added.
The outlet noted that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will not be attending the Met Gala this year, and neither will Elon Musk, who last attended in 2022. Most attendees are kept a secret until the event happens.
Wintour said in a statement that “the show was never about politics, not in conception, not now,” but is about “self-determination, beauty, creativity and holding up a lens to history.”
She did acknowledge, “the Met recognizing and taking seriously the contributions of black designers and the black community in fashion has a heightened meaning in 2025.”
