Met Gala exhibit 'Superfine' gives voice to emerging Black designers

When the email came from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jacques Agbobly at first didn’t quite believe it. The Brooklyn-based fashion designer had only been in the business for five years. Now, one of the world’s top museums was asking for two of his designs to be shown in “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” the exhibit launched by the starry Met Gala.

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“I was just floored with excitement,” Agbobly said in an interview. “I had to check to make sure it was from an official email. And then the excitement came, and I was like ... am I allowed to say anything to anyone about it?”

Agbobly grew up in Togo, watching seamstresses and tailors create beautiful garments in part of the family home that they rented out. Studying fashion later in New York, the aspiring designer watched the Met Gala carpet from afar and dreamed of one day somehow being part of it. “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” is the first Costume Institute exhibit to focus exclusively on Black designers, and the first in more than 20 years devoted to menswear. Unlike past shows that highlighted the work of very famous designers like Karl Lagerfeld or Charles James, this exhibit includes a number of up-and-coming designers like Agbobly.

“The range is phenomenal,” says guest curator Monica L. Miller, a Barnard College professor whose book, “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity,” is a foundation for the show. “It’s super exciting to showcase the designs of these younger and emerging designers,” says Miller, who took The Associated Press through the show over the weekend before its unveiling at Monday's Met Gala, “and to see the way they've been thinking about Black representation across time and across geography.”