Why are black dandies so important in today's world?

This Monday, the Met Gala took place, the event that the fashion world eagerly awaits for an entire year because it is an ode to creativity, technical virtuosity, and aesthetic theatricality. A gala that aims, on the one hand, to raise money for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and, on the other, to inaugurate the exhibition that the museum's Costume Institute dedicates annually to the history and reflection on the field of fashion. The uniqueness of this red carpet (which in this case was blue with white daffodils, in keeping with the narcissism that characterizes our society) is the fact that, unlike film festivals, it doesn't seek to have celebrities display their hegemonic beauty in conservative and predictable outfits. The Met Gala, on the contrary, rewards what we socially tend to punish: taking the risk of difference and transgression in fashion. Furthermore, one of the defining factors of the gala's dress code is knowing how to establish conceptual and aesthetic connections with the theme of the exhibition being inaugurated. And what was this year's theme? Well, under the title Tailored for you (tailored for you), the exhibition delves into Black dandyism and the use this group has made of tailoring as a weapon of struggle. But what is a dandy really, and why is it necessary to differentiate between the Black people who have been part of this counterculture?

A dandy was a 19th-century trend inherited from earlier phenomena such as macaroni or the dandies, who opposed the stereotype of masculinity imposed in the wake of the liberal revolutions. While the new bourgeois man derived from industrial capitalism and the new parliamentary states was concerned with aesthetic restraint as a supposed social equality, with a conservative moral sense and a new value on productive labor, the dandies defended a sense of life centered on the pursuit of beauty and cultural erudition as distinctive signs of social elitism. Consequently, figures such as Beau Brummell and Oscar Wilde were clear dissenters from the worldview that was being imposed in the 19th century. That said, it is interesting to emphasize Black dandies to understand that this phenomenon, far from being homogeneous, contains different layers of depth and axes of oppression depending on the origin and context of the person at its center. Black dandies did not enjoy the social privileges enjoyed by others, coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. Through the visibility of their clothing and the extreme care they took in their aesthetics, they fought against harsh social stigmas and a structural racism that denied them the rights and freedoms enjoyed by white dandies. Through custom-made suits, quality fabrics, and grandiose volumes, they sought to overcome the image of poverty that socially condemned them to the eternally harsh high-angle view and placed them on an aesthetic equal footing.

The fact that this was the theme of the Met Gala is of vital importance in the current North American context, with its harsh anti-immigration policies and the resulting racist ebb and flow. Therefore, if every year we tend to criticize celebrities who ignore the issue of exposure in favor of personal or brand glory, this year the criticism is even more outrageous. People like Janelle Monae, Teyana Taylor, Rihanna, Jodie Turner Smith, and Doja Cat, among many others, fully understood the importance of vindicating these cultural ancestors and the essence of their struggle, as well as giving visibility to the work of Black creators like Paul Tezewell and influential figures like And. The attendance of figures as fundamental to the history of the anti-racist struggle in fashion as Dapper Dan and Diana Ross was also mandatory. For this same reason, it's incomprehensible that figures like Rosalía—undeniably stunning—, Georgina Rodríguez—in a totally on-trend lingerie outfit—, or Shakira—awash in bubblegum pink fabric amid a sea of total disorientation—ignored the underlying theme of the gala, at a time when they are most clearly committed.