NEW YORK, United States (AFP) – It’s the first Monday in May, which means it’s time for the Met Gala, the extravagant Manhattan charity ball that this year spotlights Black style through the lens of dandyism’s subversive history.

The blockbuster night’s theme explores the rich and complicated history of the sharply tailored dandy aesthetic and its sociopolitical layers.

It also celebrates the opening of a corresponding exhibit, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

But for the fashionistas, the Met Gala is simply one of the world’s top red carpets with blinding star power.

Musician and designer Pharrell Williams, rapper A$AP Rocky, Oscar-nominated actor Colman Domingo and Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton are the co-chairs of fashion’s marquee event overseen by Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue.

Basketball legend LeBron James was named as an honorary chair, but withdrew Monday from appearing at the event, confirming reports that he suffered a knee injury last week and saying on X: “Hate to miss an historical event!”

A host committee featuring OutKast’s Andre 3000, star gymnast Simone Biles, rapper Doechii, sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson and director Spike Lee promise a memorable style parade.

The evening comes five years after the enormous anti-racist uprising of the Black Lives Matter movement, which pushed a number of cultural institutions in the United States to grapple with their representation of race and diversity.

This Met theme is years in the making but now coincides with Donald Trump’s recent efforts to quash institutional initiatives to promote diversity — a push to keep culture and history defined on the Republican president’s terms.

The Met Gala and its exhibit promises a sharp contrast to that notion, a deep dive into Black dandyism from the 18th century to today.

– ‘Freeing and invigorating’ –

Guest curator and Barnard professor Monica Miller’s book “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity” was the Met’s inspiration.

Her book details how dandyism was a style imposed on Black men in 18th century Europe, when well-dressed “dandified” servants became a trend.

But Black men throughout history subverted the concept as a means of cultivating power, transforming aesthetic and elegance into a means of identity establishment and social mobility.

During the vibrant Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, men wore sharp suits and polished shoes as a show of defiance in racially segregated America.

“Whether a dandy is subtle or spectacular,” Miller said at the theme’s announcement last fall, “we recognise and respect the deliberateness of the dress, the self-conscious display, the way in which this reach for perfection might seem frivolous, but can pose a challenge to… social and cultural hierarchies.”

“Superfine” is a rare Costume Institute exhibition to spotlight men and male fashion, and the first to focus on Black designers and artists.

“Black men have always been on guard. They had to be,” wrote longtime Washington Post critic Robin Givhan of the show.

“Yet fashion was also a way of amplifying their voice when it was deliberately muted or readily ignored. It was freeing and invigorating.”

Monday’s red carpet is sure to include odes to the late Andre Leon Talley, Vogue’s first Black creative director and one of fashion’s towering figures.

At the theme’s announcement ceremony, Williams — Louis Vuitton’s creative director of menswear — called the exhibit “a dream.”

“As an artist who was literally born and raised in the shadow of where the African diaspora expanded into the country that would become America, celebrating an exhibit centered on Black dandyism and the African diaspora is really, for me, a full circle moment,” said Williams, who is from Virginia.

Not only did members of the Black diaspora survive the horrors of slavery, he said, “but we carried the music, the culture, the beauty and the universal language across an ocean and over a quadruple century.”

The Met Gala was first organised in 1948 and for decades was reserved for New York high society — until Wintour transformed the party into a high-profile catwalk for the rich and famous in the 1990s.

It remains a fundraiser for the Costume Institute, but it’s also a social media extravaganza where stars and sponsors mingle at a party that celebrates fashion in its most over-the-top form.

According to The New York Times, a seat at the dinner in 2024 cost $75,000 and a full table went for $350,000.

The famed Manhattan museum reported last year’s edition raked in some $26 million.