written By Eve muyanja
edited by nnenna Hemeson
Renowned as “fashion’s biggest night,” the Met Gala stands as the world’s most glamorous, prestigious, and exclusive fashion event.
The 2025 Met Gala theme, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, draws inspiration from Monica Miller’s 2009 book ‘Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity’. This year’s event marks the first MET fashion exhibit in over two decades to center menswear.
Black Dandyism Vs Congolese Sapeur
Diasporic Black dandyism mirrors the Congolese sapeur movement—a fashion subculture that emerged in the 1920s when Congolese soldiers returned from World War I with foreign attire. These Congolese dandies, known as sapeurs, often inherit the tradition from parents and community role models. For them, dandyism resembles a religion. They revere style and derive power from being impeccably dressed.
Poverty, unemployment, and avant-garde exploitation from the superpowers of the West, East, and neighbouring nations, including Uganda and Rwanda imprison the Republic of Congo. Despite hardship and grim surroundings, Congolese dandies choose to live joyfully. They dance, celebrate, and express themselves with flair, as captured in Solange’s “Losing You” and Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “All the Stars.”
Woke elites like to label the Congolese dandy lifestyle as escapism, but to the commoner, the sapeurs entertain and inspire. Monday to Monday, they dress to impress, matching clothes and modelling with pride. Fashion and style are about self-expression, choosing who you want to be at a particular point in time. The la sapeurs of Congo are among the world’s poorest, yet they choose to spend their hard-earned income on Western luxury designer brands and clothes, sometimes at the cost of good housing.
Why? The answer is self-determination.
Devastation by Cobalt
The act of dressing well becomes a political statement, redefining how Blackness is perceived. Like their diasporic counterparts, Congolese dandies use fashion to reclaim spaces of dignity and humanity denied by systemic racism. Black dandyism challenges colonial and racial stereotypes, especially those that portray Blackness as uncivilised or inferior. Since 1996, there’s been an ongoing conflict in Congo, fueled by political rivalries, ethnic tensions, corruption, most especially corporate greed and the fight for control of valuable natural resources.
Congo’s natural resources include cobalt, a major component of electronic car and energy storage batteries. Many Congolese communities, especially in eastern Congo, have been devastated by this violence. The United Nations estimates that since 1996, over six million people have died and millions more have been displaced by the conflict. For cobalt and other natural resources like coltan, gold, and diamonds, thousands have been forcibly removed from land they have owned for generations. While thousands more are under threat of eviction by the government and foreign companies. And child labour and environmental damage are rampant.
Congo’s battle against exploitation, war, and instability has become a fight to the death. Government forces, rebel groups, and corporations continue to displace communities in pursuit of profit, stripping people of their homes and futures. Yet in the face of this violence and erasure, Congolese dandies fight back in their own way. By dressing with intention and elegance, they defy the systems that deny them dignity. The Congolese dandies subvert the denial of respect and insist on being seen as full human beings.
It’s a way of life
Contemporary menswear fashion icons like the Met Gala 2025 chairs – Pharrell Williams, Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, LeBron James – are known to continue the tradition of black dandyism by using fashion as a platform for visibility and empowerment.
Diaspora dandyism and la sapeurs of Congo are very similar. Both traditions share roots in using fashion as a means of resistance, identity construction, and aesthetic reclamation. Born out of resistance to ideas of black inferiority and assertion of dignity, both traditions challenge systems of oppression by reclaiming the very tools (European-style clothing) used to enforce colonial and racial hierarchies. By excelling in the aesthetic game imposed by the dominant culture, they reframe it as a tool for empowerment and subversion.
Our fashion is not frivolous but deeply connected to history, dignity, and liberation.
Sapeurs transform fashion into a form of cultural pride, often incorporating traditional Congolese sensibilities despite the outwardly Western appearance of their clothing. For instance, their swagger, dance-like movements, and performances are deeply rooted in African aesthetics and storytelling traditions.
Fashion as a means of resistance
They reclaim agency over their lives in a context marked by political instability and economic struggle. Tyler Mitchell’s Love Letter to Modern Black Dandyism captures this beautifully. By turning the streets into runways, sapeurs transform poverty-stricken areas into stages of artistry and dignity. Here are some shared themes between diasporic Black Dandies and La Sapeurs of Congo.
- Both cultures emphasise reclamation.
Diasporic Black dandies and La Sapeurs subvert Eurocentric beauty standards, turning the tools of oppression (European fashion) into tools of liberation and creativity. They reclaim not just their personal aesthetic but also the right to define how they are seen by the world.
- Colonial and postcolonial context.
Diasporic black dandyism developed in response to slavery and systemic racism, while Congolese dandyism arose as a response to colonialism and its legacy. Both movements repurpose fashion to critique these systems.
- Community and visibility.
Both traditions value visibility. Black dandies in the diaspora and sapeurs use fashion to make bold statements about black excellence and cultural pride, often becoming symbols of their communities.
- Performance and artistry.
Sapeurs are known for their performative swagger and flamboyance, much like the performative aspects of black dandyism in the diaspora. Both recognise the artistry involved in dressing, posing, and presenting oneself.
Diaspora dandyism and Congolese dandyism are interconnected through their shared use of fashion as a language of resistance, identity construction, and reclamation. While their contexts differ – one rooted in transatlantic slave trade and diaspora, the other in African colonialism and postcolonial struggles – they converge in their defiance of marginalisation and their celebration of Black creativity and dignity.
Fashion, in their hands, is a language of liberation.
