Pure Entertainment.
By Diana Bamimeke, May 1st 2025
‘When independence movements swept across Africa in the 1950s and 60s, ordinary people determined their own image separate from colonial narratives. Photo studios became commonplace spaces for them to certify their autonomy, their unique tastes, their singular cool. African men, in particular, posed in immaculately tailored clothes with bright colours and extravagant patterns and textures.’
The image is black and white, interior and features a young man at its centre. It’s one in a series of sixty self-portraits taken by Cameroonian-Nigerian photographer Samuel Fosso at his commercial studio. The artist, flanked by six lamps, is stupendously dressed. Fringed denim trousers. Platform boots. Fine jewellery and a perfect halo of an afro. He leans on one leg, balanced confidently on a stool, drawing my eyes up to meet his outward gaze. His head is cocked in slight puzzlement, fingers grazing his chin as if we the viewers are the curious image. It’s the 1970s in the post-independence Central African Republic, and Fosso is feeling just dandy.
On the first Monday in May - just under a week away at time of publishing - movers and shakers across fashion, art, music and entertainment will descend on the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for its annual gala to raise funds for one of its departments, the Costume Institute. I’m less interested in the celebrity circus the Met Gala draws than I am in the inspiration for its corresponding Spring 2025 exhibition, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. The central figure in the exhibition is the Black dandy, a masculine (but not necessarily male) personality who takes the business of dressing flamboyantly very seriously, approaching it more like a lifestyle than a passing fashion trend. 70’s Lifestyle (1974 - 78), the collection Fosso’s self-portrait is taken from, captures an African strand of Black dandyism in the context of a rapidly changing continent. The idea of the dandy itself comes from late eighteenth and nineteenth century culture in Britain, when young aristocratic men styled themselves in outrageous fashions. The dandy then had a personal attention to beauty and taste, the heights of which were matched only by their elevated class status in British society.
But what about the Black dandy? The term brought up a few references for me. First, les sapeurs: the fashionably and vibrantly suited members of La SAPE or Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes (the Society of Ambiance Makers and Elegant Persons), who I’m sure would count Fosso in their stylish ranks. La SAPE is a movement, lifestyle and cultural phenomenon in Kinshasa and Brazzaville, the capital cities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Congo respectively. Les sapeurs notably star in Solange Knowles’ music video for her 2012 single Losing You, in which she poses and dances exuberantly alongside them in a bright tailored suit of her own. Second, Janelle Monáe. Over the course of their almost twenty-year musical career, Monáe has built a deliciously queer speculative world where concept albums like The ArchAndroid and Dirty Computer play out their stories. But their style has made an equal name for itself; Monáe is also famous for turning out “menswear” looks that upend ideas of gendered fashion. Lastly, I thought of mid-twentieth century photographic practices on the African continent and the ways image-making became a powerful tool of self-definition for people newly liberated (at least, that was the idea) from European colonial rule.
Samuel Fosso is one of many African photographers - like Seydou Keïta, Joseph Agbojelou or Malick Sidibé - who documented themselves and others on the continent in this period. I stumbled onto 70’s Lifestyle and Fosso’s other work while researching the Black dandy. Then I pored over other artists’ troves of colour and monochromatic photographs, time capsules of a rich social, political and sartorial moment in history. These images are part of a long lineage of Black and African people defining themselves on their own terms, through subversion and reclamation. Power is a key element when we look at the original Black dandies: Africans kidnapped to western shores, enslaved and, among other indignities, forced to dress in elaborate clothing to be displayed by their status-obsessed kidnappers. When independence movements swept across Africa in the 1950s and 60s, ordinary people determined their own image separate from colonial narratives. Photo studios became commonplace spaces for them to certify their autonomy, their unique tastes, their singular cool. African men, in particular, posed in immaculately tailored clothes with bright colours and extravagant patterns and textures. Over in the United States, our diasporic kin spun their own fashion stories in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities. They gave us the Harlem Renaissance. They gave us hip hop and the shiny suit era and Dapper Dan’s monogrammed wares, laying the foundations for contemporary streetwear.
I really enjoyed this stroll into Black dandyism and the stories behind it, but in writing this piece, I couldn’t help asking myself why the Metropolitan Museum of Art chose it as the 2025 theme. I suspect it’s an indirect response to the outrage generated by last year’s gala, which social media users decried as insensitive and out-of-touch in the context of economic inequalities and Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. The backlash was followed up by a well-meaning but politically toothless drive to block celebrities online who hadn’t “said anything” about Palestine. Altogether, it was a sticky PR situation. Chief Vogue maven Anna Wintour and Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton must have said, “here, damn!” by then conveniently programming the first ever exhibition to feature only designers of colour. They have also brought back the host committee, a group of famous attendees who promote the event. The New York Times nauseatingly described this year’s committee as a “mosaic of Black excellence”, made up of wealthy Black individuals. While I enjoy the work of some of the hosts, like Doechii, Ayo Edebiri and indeed Janelle Monáe, I’m less enthusiastic about the Museum usurping Black histories and draining them of their disruptive political charge. And it’s hard not to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth of the exhibition’s funding: this year, it’s sponsored primarily by Louis Vuitton. Last year, its parent company LVMH - which also owns Dior and Hennessy - was accused of egregious worker abuses, including removing safety mechanisms from machinery, and forcing workers to sleep in the workplace so that there is “manpower available 24 hours a day”. LVMH is also owned and led by billionaire Bernard Arnault, a French investor in Israeli companies. So while gala co-chair and Louis Vuitton creative director Pharrell gets richer, ordinary working people are ground down by his bosses.
Black people across the diaspora have historically been denied the power to collectively self-actualise. Dandyism, then, is a legitimate retort, a snatching-back of ourselves from the jaws of white supremacist high culture. But when power gets confused with consumption, as it so often is these days, you end up with a culture that prides wealth accumulation and its associated perks (like luxury designer fashions) at the expense of the masses, which includes you, me and anyone who has to sell their time and vitality to live. Identity formation shouldn’t happen on the terms of a vast and exploitative global economy. It should happen when we want it to, when we finally choke out the coercive forces telling us a designer bag is a suitable replacement for the love, belonging and human dignity found in collective mobilisation. As political philosopher Joy James says, we should “tinker with [the] machinery” of our society and “not just be seduced by it”.
Enjoy the Met Gala shenanigans for what they are, pure entertainment. But don’t mistake this as a win for Black people. Like Samuel Fosso staring out at the viewer in his self-portrait, get curious. Get curious about your own fashion sensibilities, not what is fed to us as “trendy” by business interests. Get curious about the conditions of your life and of others, how they came to be and how they might be transformed. And, keep cool—truly cool.
