This year's Met Gala dress code focuses on the art of tailoring

Every spring, as celebrities walk the red carpet for the Met Gala, they try to fit a particular dress code. Then fashion-lovers (and haters) debate their sartorial selections. This year's dress code was just announced, and it's "Tailored for You," so expect to see suiting and menswear in the spotlight.

The Met Gala conventions can be a little confusing—even to New Yorkers—so we're going to break it down. Here's everything we know about the 2025 Met Gala theme, dress code, and exhibit. 

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What is The Met Gala?

It's not just a party. 

Though The Met Gala red carpet gets the spotlight, that star-studded event is actually in service of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibits. The money raised at the party is the main source of funding for the Met's Costume Institute (that's the Met department that handles fashion exhibits and maintains a massive collection of clothing). 

Last year, The Met Gala raised a whopping $24 million for The Costume Institute, per the New York Times. In 2024, a ticket cost $75,000, the Times added. So, celebs, please go ahead and open your pocketbooks to help the Met create museum exhibits for us all to enjoy. This year's Met Gala will be held on Monday, May 5, then the exhibit opens to the public a few days later.

Anna Wintour, Vogue's editor-in-chief, is the co-chair of the event, a position she's held since the 1990s. Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, and Pharrell Williams will also serve as co-chairs this year. LeBron James will serve as honorary chair. Renowned chef and (five-star) Tatiana owner Kwame Onwuachi will feed guests; artist Cy Gain will serve as the creative director alongside Derek McLane and Raúl Àvila.

Host committee members include André 3000, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Simone Biles and Jonathan Owens, Grace Wales Bonner, Jordan Casteel, Dapper Dan, Doechii, Ayo Edebiri, Edward Enninful, Jeremy O. Harris, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Rashid Johnson, Regina King, Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee, Audra McDonald, Janelle Monáe, Jeremy Pope, Angel Reese, Sha'Carri Richardson, Olivier Rousteing, Tyla, USHER, and Kara Walker.

What is The Met Gala theme and dress code?

This year's theme is "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style," and it's based on an exhibit of the same name, which highlights Black style in menswear over the centuries. 

The dress code, "Tailored For You," is "a nod to the exhibition's focus on suiting and menswear—from specific silhouettes to various fabrics and accessories—that is purposefully designed to both provide guidance and invite creative interpretation," The Met said in a press release. 

What is the The Met's fashion exhibit this year?

The exhibition, "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style," examines Black style from the 18th century to today through an exploration of the concept of dandyism. The Met's CEO Max Hollein describes the exhibit as "a profoundly scholarly show centering an important legacy of Black-led sartorial innovation and creative expression that continues to inspire and shape our world today."

The exhibition is The Costume Institute's first devoted to menswear in more than two decades. It runs from May 10 to October 26, 2025.

The show was inspired by guest curator Monica L. Miller’s book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. It chronicles the ways in which Black people have used dress and fashion to transform their identities and imagine new ways of embodying political and social possibilities. Expect to see monumental sculptures, bespoke mannequin heads, paintings, prints, films, a photo essay, and, of course, incredible garments.

Superfine is organized into 12 sections, each representing a style characteristic such as ownership, presence, distinction, disguise, freedom, respectability, heritage and more. 

"The exhibition title refers to 'superfine' not only as the quality of a particular fabric—'superfine wool'—but also as a particular attitude related to feeling especially good in one's own body, in clothes that express the self. Wearing superfine and being superfine are, in many ways, the subject of this exhibition," Miller said in a press release. "And the separateness, distinction, and movement between these two states of 'being' in the African diaspora from the 1780s to today animates the show."