In the glare of camera flashes on the first Monday in May, it’s easy to forget that the Met Gala isn’t just an expensive-looking celebrity parade: It’s also the opening celebration for a museum show. This year, the party will inaugurate “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” an exhibition put on by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute that traces the influence of the Black dandy over 300 years.

The exhibition investigates how dandyism, a style of elevated dress once imposed upon enslaved people, was remade by Black aesthetes into a tool of social mobility and self-definition. It might take the form of a tweedy three-piece suit, a disco-fabulous stage costume or a slouchy leather jacket printed with luxury logos. Those pieces and more than 200 others in the exhibition illustrate how Black dandies have wielded their clothing as instruments of both flair and function.

Prof. Monica Miller in a back room of the Costume Institute.