Highlights from the Met Gala exhibition: A look at the black style gives an emerging designer a prominent voice

When the e -mail came from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jacques didn't quite believe it at first.

The fashion designer based in Brooklyn has only been in business for five years. Now one of the world's leading museums asked for two of his designs, which are to be shown in “Superfine: Tacoring Black Style”, the exhibition created by the Starry Met Gala.

“I was only planned before excitement,” said Agbobly in an interview. “I had to check whether it came from an official e -mail. And then the excitement came and I was like … May I say something about it?”

Agbobly grew up in Togo and watched how sailor and tailors create beautiful clothing in part of the family home that they rented. The aspiring designer later studied fashion in New York and saw the carpet from afar and dreamed of somehow being part of it for a day.

“Superfine: Tacoring Black Style” is the first exhibition for the costume institute that focuses exclusively on black designers, and the first in more than 20 years that is devoted to men's clothing. In contrast to previous shows that have highlighted the work of very famous designers such as Karl Lagerfeld or Charles James, this exhibition includes a number of aspiring designers like Agbobly.

“The range is phenomenal,” says guest curator Monica L. Miller, a professor of Barnard College, whose book “Slaves for fashion: black dandyism and the styling of the black diasporic identity” is a basis for the show.

“It is super exciting to present the designs of these younger and up -and -coming designers,” says Miller, who led a reporter through the show over the weekend before it reveals at the Met Gala on Monday, “and to see how they thought about the time and the entire geography about the black representation.”

Define dandyism

The exhibition encompasses the black style for several centuries, but the uniform topic is dandyism and, as the designer of this ethos have expressed through history.

For Agbobly, dandyism is “for space.

The exhibition begins with its own definition: someone who “studies everything else to dress elegantly and fashionably”.

Miller organized it in 12 conceptual sections: owner, presence, award, disguise, freedom, champion, respectability, Jook, heir, beauty, cool and cosmopolitanism.

How clothing can be dehumanized, but also agency

The possession of the ownership begins with two paintwork worn by slaves.

One of them from Maryland looks lavishly and complex in purple and lila, which is cut with gold metallic threads. The clothing should show the wealth of their owners. In other words, Miller says, the slaves themselves were objects with striking consumption.

The other is a painting by Tan Broadcloth, which is probably made by Brooks Brothers and is carried by a enslaved child or young boy in Louisiana shortly before the civil war.

Elsewhere there is a contemporary, glittering ensemble of the British designer Grace Wales Bonner, consisting of a crushed silk lamt and with crystals, and the cowrie mussels that are used historically as a currency in Africa.

There is also a so-called “dollar-Bill suit” from the label 3. Paradis-Die jacket with a laminated one-dollar bill that is sewn in the breast pocket and should indicate the lack of wealth.

How dress can both dress up and reveal

The disguise department contains a collection of newspaper advertisements from the 19th century, in which rewards for catching out of control are announced.

The ads, according to Miller, often describe someone who “dressed” – or noticed that the slave had taken large wardrobes. The reason was double: chic clothes made it possible for a slave to overthrow their identity. But when they finally made it into freedom, former slaves could sell the clothes to finance their new life, says Miller.

“So it was sometimes a question of life and death,” says the curator, “and also made it possible for people to switch from slaves to liberation.”

The contemporary part of this section contains striking embroidered jackets of the label, which deliberately plays with gender roles as an apparently “male” jacket on a mannequin.

Views of an emerging black middle and upper middle class

Miller, since a number of portraits from the early 19th century took place in the north, explains that the test subjects are black men who were successful enough to be good enough to stand or sit on portraits and dress up with the best fashion of the day. Like William Whipper, a abolitionist and wealthy wooden dealer who also founded a literary society.

They represent the beginnings of a black middle and upper middle class in America, says Miller. But it indicates a group of racist caricatures in one case directly opposite the portraits.

“Almost as soon as you can do this,” she says and refers to the portraits, “are you stereotype and degraded.”

Projecting visibility: Web du Bois and Frederick Douglass

Web du Bois, as Miller emphasizes, was not only a civil rights activist, but also one of the best dressed men who are America at the turn of the century. He traveled extensively after overseas, which meant that he “needed clothing that corresponded to his status as a representative of black America in the world”.

The objects in the advertisement contain receipts for tailors in London and tightening orders from Brooks Brothers or his Harlem cutter. There is also a laundry receipt from 1933 for cleaning shirts, collars and handkerchiefs.

Also highlighted in this section: Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, writer and statesman as well as “the most photographed man of the 19th century”.

The show includes its tail lacquer made of brushed wool and a shirt embroidered with a “D” monogram, a top hat, a stick and sunglasses.

Designers who reflect their African heritage

One of Miller's favorite items in the “Heritage” section is the light -colored ensemble of Agbobly, which is based on the pocket bags with which West African migrants transported their things.

Agbobly's denim suit, which is decorated with crystals and pearls, is also displayed. It is a tribute not only for the hair brothers in which the designer spent time as a child, but also the earrings that his grandmother or aunts would wear if they went to church.

Speaking of family, says Agbobly, that he finally said it and all of his “Pinch-Me-Moment”.

“Everyone knows about it,” says the designer. “I keep crying. If I can scream on a hill, I'll do it.”

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For full reporting on the MET GALA, see: