Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Coming up on today's show, author Carl Hiaasen is here. His new book, Fever Beach tackles white supremacy, far-right extremism, dark money, billionaires, and our polarized culture, and of course, it takes place in Florida.

We'll also talk about a new play at the Irish Rep called "The Black Wolfe Tone," and it stars Dublin's own Kwaku Fortune. He plays a man named Kevin who is smart and charming and finds himself at a psychiatric hospital. He joins us to talk about his one-man show, and we'll speak with Tony Award-winning producer and now author Jeffrey Seller. His new memoir is titled Theater Kid. That's the plan. Let's get things started with the Met Costume Institute.

[music]

Alison Stewart: The theme of this year's Met Gala celebrated Black dandyism, a style of self-expression which allows Black people to assert individuality, dignity, and autonomy in the face of societal constraints. The gala raised a record $31 million, and now patrons can learn more about the origins of the style at a new exhibition. It's titled "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style."

Featuring approximately 230 garments, paintings, photographs, and ephemera, it explores the importance of both clothing and style in the formation of Black identities across the diaspora. The show harkens back to coats worn by those in subjugation to uniforms of Haitian generals worn in the fight for liberation. Joining us to discuss it is guest curator Monica Miller, who is the professor and a chair of Africana Studies at Barnard College. She wrote the book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" will be on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through Sunday, October 26th. Monica, welcome to All Of It.

Monica Miller: Oh, thank you so much, Alison. It's a real pleasure to be here.

Alison Stewart: The show's title is taken from an 18th century story of a captured and enslaved African man. He said, "I laid out above eight pounds of my money for a suit of superfine clothes to dance with at my freedom." It's written on the wall as you enter the exhibit. Who was he, and why does this statement give us something to think about as we walk through the show?

Monica Miller: Olaudah Equiano, his story is phenomenal. He was an enslaved man who authored his memoir, was considered to be one of the few, if not the only mount of the Middle Passage. We looked to Olaudah Equiano's memoir to learn about that experience and also to understand what it meant to transition from enslavement to freedom. In his particular case, he was enslaved to somebody who was a merchant and learned the merchant's trade and eventually was allowed to trade on his own and saved up that eight pounds. [crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: You know what, Monica? I'm going to interrupt you for one second because you know what? You're fading in and out. Your connection is bad, so we're going to get you on the phone. I'm going to tell our listeners about our Get Lit with All Of It book club event while we get you on the phone. Listeners, I want you to know that we are reading Audition by Katie Kitamura. It's our Get Lit with All Of It selection. It's about an established actress and a young man who sit down together for a lunch in Manhattan and they're able to talk to each other, but we really want to know what this lunch is all about. It soon becomes clear.

I will be in conversation with Katie Kitamura and you on Thursday, May 29th at 6:00 PM at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library. Our special musical guest is also a stage actor, but he's also a musician as well. It's Reeve Carney. If you would like to know more about this, head to wnyc.org/getlit. Again, this is happening on Thursday, May 29th. Tickets are free, but they will go fast, so head to wnyc.org/getlit to reserve yours.

You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Monica Miller. We're talking about the Met Costume's new exhibition "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" with Monica Miller, whose book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity inspired the theme for this year's gala. Monica, are you there?

Monica Miller: Yes, I am.

Alison Stewart: Oh, you sound so good. That sounds better. You were explaining to me a little bit about this enslaved African man. Would you start again for us?

Monica Miller: I'm sorry, I can't hear very well.

Alison Stewart: Would you please explain to us the story behind the man whose quote starts the exhibition?

Monica Miller: Yes. The man whose quote starts the exhibition is named Olaudah Equiano, and he was an enslaved man whose memoir that you just quoted from was one of the very, very few memoirs by enslaved people that included an account of the Middle Passage. He had an incredibly cosmopolitan life. He was captured in West Africa, enslaved in the Caribbean, spent some time in Virginia, and then eventually moved to England after he was able to self-liberate.

What's important about that moment of self-liberation for me and for the exhibition is that he signaled this new feeling of freedom through sartorial expression. It was important for him, signally important for him to save that money to buy the suit of superfine clothes to dance in at his freedom. Superfine for him was a luxury wool that he was really interested in, but it was also a feeling of being liberated and in particular self-liberating.

Alison Stewart: You mentioned in W Magazine that you were invited to think differently as you translated your research from the book to text to the visual culture of an exhibition.

Monica Miller: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What freedom and flexibility did this offer you as a curator as you chose to present the concept of Black dandyism to a new audience?

Monica Miller: Being asked to do this exhibition was really a kind of creative and imaginative experience for me. Really kind of tapped into, I think, I don't know-- I mean, the ways in which I've been thinking about visual culture within Black communities and cultures in the diaspora. I was really able to use all of that.

The translation really involved taking a book that was really based in literature and visual culture into an exhibition that's based in garments, and when the garments are not there, which I can say a little bit more about later, when the garments are not there, filling in that sartorial history with paintings, with prints, with decorative arts and film. That translation was sort of like opening up my head, and then creating experience that people could kind of walk through.

Alison Stewart: Ooh, well, give me an example.

Monica Miller: For example, at the very beginning of the exhibition, you meet a small case that has two coins in it. The coin on the left is a silver coin called the dandiprat that may be perhaps, yes or no, the origin of the word dandy. What's interesting to me about that association is that it means that dandyism is a kind of currency, a form of exchange associated with self-worth and value. The coin next to it, or is a pendant, actually, that's made by the contemporary Brooklyn-based designers Soull & Dynasty Ogun, who design under the name L'Enchanteur.

They created a kind of fantastical coin that might have been currency that could have been used in the Caribbean, say, if colonialism hadn't existed or before colonialism arrived there. In that case, you get a conversation between value, worth, currency, the ability to kind of fashion a self and what that means and how much it's worth in some ways, in two different systems. That is a kind of theoretical concept in my book that was able to be materialized in that little case.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about the Met Costume Institute's new exhibition "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" with guest curator Monica Miller. She's chair of Africana Studies at Barnard College. The show is broken into 12 thematic sections, titles like Champion, Heritage, Beauty, Respectability. One of the areas is Distinction, and in this section, you highlight figures from the Haitian Revolution, such as Toussaint L’Ouverture.

Monica Miller: Yes.

Alison Stewart: How does his uniform and the uniforms of other soldiers reflect the revolution in Haiti and what it meant to people?

Monica Miller: I would take it back even a little bit before that, because when we think about dandyism and define dandyism, it's really about an intentionality in dress. In some ways, a discipline and practice in relationship to that. Sometimes it looks really sober and put together, and it's actually historically related to military uniforms, the ways in which those uniforms are kind of impeccably styled and everything has to be absolutely perfect down to the shoe shine.

Sometimes dandyism looks very different, but also intentional, in terms of it being a little bit more flamboyant or spectacular. What's important about that Distinction section is we wanted to-- We talk about distinction in different ways throughout the exhibition, but that moment is, again, related to what we were just talking about with Olaudah Equiano, in that the Haitian Revolution is the origin of the first self-determining Black republic in the Western hemisphere. Again, a moment of self-emancipation.

What's really important about those uniforms, even when we look at it in a painting depicting Toussaint L’Ouverture or the number of prints that are there, that are subsequent Haitian presidents and emperors. Is the way in which those Black men are using the military uniform to not just signal a kind of self-discipline and pride that's related to military prowess or masculinity, but really about doing that as a group and also as self-determining people that we think about as an example for all of the other Black people that were involved in decolonization and desegregation movements that come afterwards.

It's about the occupation of this military uniform with a different, in some ways, purpose and pride that we're trying to really show in that section.

Alison Stewart: Another theme that is explored is the cosmopolitan. What does that mean?

Monica Miller: Yes. That section is called cosmopolitanism, and what we're interested in that section is really thinking about the way that travel, migration, sometimes forced travel, sometimes forced migration, or chosen travel and migration, again, contribute to the way in which Black identity changes over time and in different spaces. Each of the exhibition sections are led into, or you're led into them through a quotation by a Black writer.

The person who is at the head of that section is Frantz Fanon, and he says something like, "In the world in which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself." We really want to think about in that section and throughout the exhibition, because it's the last moment that you're in, is about this endless creation of the self and the way that clothing, dress, and power; sometimes self-empowerment; sometimes, in some ways, power imposed from outside of the group is really a part of that conversation; and the way that style migrates, people migrate, and how that changes over time.

Alison Stewart: One part of the show, I understand, is about respectability. I was curious, does the show talk about respectability politics at all?

Monica Miller: Oh, absolutely. That's very, very much a part of-- I mean, I don't think you can mention the word respectability without talking about respectability politics. Also, dandyism's relationship to that. I do think that in the show we are really talking about a kind of dialectic between being fashioned and fashioning the self, but also understanding that fashioning the self is sometimes something you do for others, in order to get a hearing, in order to enter a particular room, in order to get something done.

Sometimes self-fashioning is actually done much more for the self. It can be imposed. Respectability politics can impose particular style or way of being from the outside or it can be something that is taken on as a strategy. Respectability politics are really important to this conversation, because the exhibit really does think about tension. It is absolutely a celebration of contemporary Black fashion designers, but it is also an acknowledgement of Black history, which always includes tension.

Alison Stewart: What are some ways that the show explores or includes people of various genders?

Monica Miller: Oh, yes. Dandyism is, I think, historically a masculine or male activity, but did not in any way stay there because it's an exploration of masculinity, I think, dress, power, comportment, and also always an exploration of gender. There are a number of women in the exhibition as well as a number of gender-expansive people and stories, so that we really want to, again, think about dandyism or the dandy as a figure that's really exploring boundaries, especially when the dandy is racialized as Black. Exploring boundaries of race and racialization; boundaries of gender, masculine, feminine, non-binary; sexuality, heterosexuality, homosexuality; class.

All of those things are happening within the dandy figure as he or she moves through space. One of the figures that we have in the exhibition would be Stormé DeLarverie, who was a masculine-presenting woman who wore suits in the middle part of the 20th century, who led a musical revue called the Jewel Box Revue that played in Harlem and particularly at the Apollo. Stormé was a major LGBTQ activist in the middle part of the 20th century and signally involved in the Stonewall Uprising and used masculine clothing because that was how she expressed herself. That was her-- clothing can reveal or conceal an identity. That was how Stormé presented.

Alison Stewart: We've seen all of the images from the Met Gala. Who provided a good conduit between the Met Gala and what this show is about?

Monica Miller: [crosstalk] I saw so many people doing that. One of the great pleasures of this whole process for me has been-- When I wrote my book a long time ago, it was designed for an academic audience. One of the things that has been both pleasurable and funny to me is the way that this book has now made it into a much more popular arena, including the hands of some celebrities, which has been really wonderful. For me, what I saw happening at the Met Gala was that people studied. I mean, I feel like, because it was associated with my book, like there was an assignment. [crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: [laughs] "They got the assignment."

Monica Miller: They got the assignment. They really did, and it was so beautiful, I mean, for me, to see. For example, Colman Domingo, he knew the assignment ahead of time, and really, in the way that-- He had two different looks. One that was related to the Moors in Spain, and another that was much more related to kind of zoot suiting in the early part of the 20th century.

Colman has been studying and actually adding to the discourse for a very long time. I really loved Jodie Turner-Smith. Her ensemble was a tribute to a 19th century Black woman in Paris who was a well-known equestrian there. It was phenomenal. I mean, it was just absolutely phenomenal, but people really studied, and I was really-- it was actually really moving for me.

Alison Stewart: My guest has been Monica Miller, a Barnard College professor and chair of Africana Studies. She is the guest curator of the Met's new exhibition titled "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style." Thank you for being with us and thank you for bearing through the technical difficulties.

Monica Miller: Oh, thank you so much, Alison. I'm very happy to have had this time with you.