THE MET — SUPERFINE BLACK TAILORING
There are exhibitions that document fashion, and exhibitions that reframe it. Superfine: Tailoring Black Style at The Met was the second kind — an exhibition about the history and cultural significance of Black tailoring, looking at identity, authorship, and resistance through the suit itself.
I was in New York the day before NYFW, helping backstage for Arielle Juliet's show, and went to The Met with the owner of my fashion school, who also taught me. Walking through it with her felt less like a visit and more like a proper lesson. She kept pointing things out as we went — how a collar had been constructed a particular way, how a detail on the jacket would show up again on the trousers, deliberately, so the whole look held together as one idea rather than two separate pieces.
The suit in this exhibition isn't neutral. It's a language — shaped by history, power, and visibility, a way of being seen on your own terms. Tailoring's moved between assimilation and resistance over different periods, and what stood out most, with her talking me through it, was how often the suit gets reclaimed rather than just worn.
It reminded me of my own training, actually. Years before fashion school in Miami, I studied textiles at school in England — three years learning the basics of sewing and construction with pre-made patterns, which ended with designing and making my own two-piece suit for my final exam. Standing in front of these garments, with someone who actually taught me pointing out the same kind of construction decisions, brought all of that straight back. The discipline behind it. The precision. The amount that's happening underneath what you actually see.
It changed how I think about intention a bit. Not just what someone's wearing, but how deliberately it was built, and why those decisions were made in the first place. There's no guesswork in tailoring like this — every seam, every proportion is a choice. That's something I recognize in my own work too, a slower, more considered way of making things.
For another perspective on construction as language, read my visit to the Giorgio Armani Privé retrospective in Milan — twenty years of haute couture distilled into a single exhibition.