At the 2025 Met Gala in New York, Pharrell Williams and Lewis Hamilton will highlight black dandyism in fashion through the lens of black diasporas, celebrating cultural resilience and artistic contributions.
Pharrell Williams and F1 driver Lewis Hamilton will co-chair the next Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, which will focus on the history of fashion through black diasporas, the museum announced on Wednesday.
Five years after the massive anti-racist protests of the "Black Lives Matter" movement, which led many American cultural institutions to rethink their representation of diversity, the May 2025 gala will also be co-chaired by rapper ASAP Rocky, actor Colman Domingo, and, as every year, Vogue's editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.
American basketball legend LeBron James has been named honorary president of the event.
According to the Met, black dandyism refers to a clothing style initially forced on slaves in 18th-century Europe and its reappropriations throughout fashion history. This theme will also be at the heart of the major exhibition at the Costume Institute, the Metropolitan Museum's textile arts department, which traditionally opens in conjunction with the gala on the first Monday in May.
Pharrell Williams, now the creative director of Louis Vuitton — one of the event’s sponsors — highlighted during the announcement alongside British driver Lewis Hamilton the importance of celebrating cultures born from slavery, which still resonate deeply within American society.
"We are the survivors of perhaps the worst ordeals ever endured by a group of human beings, and not only did we survive, but we carried music, culture, beauty, and a universal language across an ocean and four centuries," he emphasized in his speech.
"This is what the Met Gala will celebrate: us, our talents, our history, our cuisine, our resilience, and our beauty, our style, and our strength," he added.
The Met Gala, a must-attend event for fashion enthusiasts globally, is known for its celebrity ascents up the grand staircase in extravagant designer outfits, with proceeds funding the Costume Institute.
According to the New York Times, in 2024, a seat at the dinner cost $75,000, a whole table $350,000, and the previous edition raised about $22 million.
With AFP
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