Black style at Met Gala Fashion meets politics at the party of the year

On Monday night, the party of the year will ask the question: can Vogue keep diversity in fashion in Trump's America?

- Jess Cartner-Morley

At the Met Gala, the knotty point where fashion meets politics will be in the spotlight. The gala has become a cultural phenomenon, reinventing party dressing as a world of internet-breaking stunts: Kim Kardashian wearing the dress in which Marilyn Monroe serenaded John F Kennedy, Lady Gaga changing outfits four times in front of the cameras and Katy Perry dressed as a cheeseburger.

But the gala is also the opening night of the Costume Institute's annual fashion exhibition, which this year addresses a politically charged theme of dandyism, race, masculinity and the underrepresentation of black creativity in western museum culture.

This is about how black men in America and Europe have used clothes as self-expression. But it lands just as the Trump administration is pushing back against diversity. With popcorn-worthy dramatic timing, a show that honours immigrants and celebrates inclusive definitions of masculinity, gets its all-singing, all-dancing moment in New York, under the gaze of a government that stands in baseball-hatted opposition to all of the above.