Superfine, Styled: A Study in Power Dressing from the 2025 MET Chairmen

The Chairmen Defining Superfine At The Met Gala: Analyzing The Style Of This Year’s Four Leading Men 

Fashion, at its core, doesn’t clothe— it constructs. It has the ability to sculpt presence, gesture toward history, and in moments like the Met Gala, become a kind of visual study. This year, the study is sharp, layered, and rooted in heritage. The 2025 theme, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, invited not just garments and stunning visuals, but narratives to walk the red carpet. The event’s co-chairs A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, Colman Domingo, and Lewis Hamilton stand as case studies in how Black style is never just about aesthetics. It’s about legacy, visibility, and control over one's image in a world that has so often sought to dictate it.

Black men have historically redefined elegance, dignity, and defiance through tailored dressing. From figures such as Frederick Douglass, famous for self-asserting razor sharp structure and lines, to Andre Leon Talley’s lifelong sport of unapologetic dramatic silhouettes. It seems fitting, then, that the first ever all-black all-male co-chairs A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, Colman Domingo, and Lewis Hamilton each carry this legacy forward in different manifestations. Their styles may incorporate distinct aesthetics, but all share a common commitment: to fashion as established self-construction.

The selection of this year’s chair-men was intentional. Less focussed on performance or shifting trends in current media they double not only as iconic and stylish celebrities but as embodiments of a broader conversation reflecting the theme’s deeper proposition: that tailoring can be more than fit and form. It can be a way of reshaping who gets to be seen, and how.

A$AP Rocky for Vogue May 2025

A$AP Rocky: The Maximalist Minimalist

A$AP Rocky wears contradiction well. The Harlem born rapper and style icon treats the sidewalk like a showroom, where archival Raf Simons and late 90’s Gucci intertwine with vintage denim and silk scarves knotted expressly. His fashion is often studied and styled, but rarely stiff, as he toggles between punk nonchalance and runway polish with the ease of someone who knows they have taste and style.

At past Met Galas, Rocky has delivered both statement and subtlety. Who else could drape himself in a thrifted quilt and walk beside Rihanna without disappearing? Or channel Karl Lagerfeld with a pleated kilt over rhinestone jeans, bringing a high/low remix that felt less homage and more hijack? His subversive remixing dates back to long standing traditions of black fashion transforming codes of luxury and dominance by reimagining and repurposing style. His fashion leans playful, but the stakes are real: he’s showing us how legacy brands and streetwear aren't opposites, they’re chapters in the same book, just with different editors.      

Pharrell Williams For GQ (2008)

Pharrell Williams: Timeless Yet adaptable

Pharrell’s style is paradoxically consistent in its evolution. He doesn’t dress like he’s chasing trends, he dresses like he’s lived through several lifetimes of them. From the giant Vivienne Westwood hat of the 2014 Grammys to Chanel tweed biker jackets, Pharrell has made a career out of blending genre, gender, and generation.

As Louis Vuitton’s men’s creative director, his personal aesthetic now shapes the very industry that once questioned his taste. But Pharrell's fashion has always been about autonomy. As an advisor for Nigo’s lifestyle brand “Human Made”, hes no stranger to clean lines of Japanese minimalism, the youth of streetwear, and the discipline of tailoring come together in looks that never shout, but always assert. He wears shorts with dinner jackets, pearl necklaces with baseball caps not to illicit, but to propose: what if elegance is not a code to crack but a language to speak fluently in your own accent?

Colman Domingo in AMIRI at the 2025 Critics’ Circle Film Awards

Colman Domingo: Drama Both On And Off Screen

Colman Domingo’s red carpet presence has emerged like a well maintained secret, quiet at first, then impossible to ignore. His recent fashion turns are lush with bold statements. Whether in fuchsia suiting or rich, textured fabrics that recall ministerial robes or Harlem Renaissance swagger, Domingo wears clothes like memory: layered, intentional, and rich honoring what came before through looks that feel archival as if stitched by the ghosts of nights past. Working frequently with designer Willy Chavarria, Domingo’s fashion is unafraid of color, silhouette, or narrative, pioneering a space in men’s fashion that transcends tradition. 

At last year’s Met Gala, he paid tribute to Chadwick Boseman and André Leon Talley—two men whose styles were, in their own ways, acts of resistance. Domingo's style, too, resists: the flattening of Black masculinity, the expectation of understatement, the tyranny of the “classic.” He’s proof that sophistication doesn’t mean silence.

 Lewis Hamilton at the Media Day Australia Grand Prix 2025

Lewis Hamilton: From The Track To Runway

Lewis Hamilton is a man in motion, not just on the Formula 1 circuit but in fashion. Where many athletes gravitate toward sportswear-heavy luxury, Hamilton leans tailored, structured, sharp, and often experimental. As a Hilfiger ambassador, He’s been known to show up in preppy looks such as suiting with an edge, wide-legged trousers, or sheer shirts that expose both physique and vulnerability.

Since 2015, his Met Gala appearances have become increasingly deliberate. His 2021 look— a Black designer showcase that included Kenneth Nicholson and Theophilio— was less about standing out than lifting others up. Hamilton’s fashion is strategic but soulful, blending British tailoring with Afro-Caribbean flair, high performance with high polish. In short: His personal style mimics the spirit of his career choice. To push the limit and surpass expectations. 

Defining Superfine

Together, the 2025 Met Gala co-chairs represent a spectrum of Black masculinity in fashion bold, precise, eclectic, restrained. They are not cut from the same cloth, but they all know the value of a good cut. Their presence at the head of this year’s theme signals a shift: from fashion as display to fashion as statement, from surface to substance.

When the red carpet unfurls tonight, we’ll no doubt be treated to pageantry. But behind the flash, look closer. This year’s co-chairs aren’t just attending the Gala; they're wearing the rich cultural legacy it celebrates. This year, Superfine isn’t just tailoring– it’s authorship.