For this year’s Met Gala, the Gabriela Hearst team consulted with Dr Cherise Smith, the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in African American Studies in the Department African & African Diaspora Studies, and with Dr. Rikki Byrd, Assistant Professor of Visual Culture Studies in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin on the historical context of Black dandyism, and its significance as a repurposing, a refashioning and a rebuke against the status quo.
Chris Rock, Questlove, and Rashid Johnson wear custom Gabriela Hearst to The 2025 MET Gala at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 05, 2025 in New York City.
Chris Rock wears a custom single-breasted blazer with pick-stitch detail and straight fit trouser. The suit is made out of white colored suede with a cashmere stand-collar buttoned shirt.
After seeing Rock performing Selective Outrage, Hearst said, “Nothing is more sexy and simultaneously brings trepidation like a white suede suit. So for a brilliant mind such as Chris, a white suede would be right. I see him as a prophet of our times, someone with the ability to put his finger on the Zeitgeist of our current culture. We wanted the design to feel exactly how Chris’ personality is. He is someone so sophisticated but at the same time he’s casual. So, we wanted the classic shape of the tailoring, but it had to have the ease that defines Chris’ style. The idea of having it impeccable, crisp and sharp is exactly what Chris' humor is.”
With this idea of developing a white suit, Dr. Smith and Dr. Byrd shared the work and imagery of Harlem Renaissance performer Gladys Bentley and her impeccable white tailoring, as well as the powerful life-sized self-portrait of visual artist Barkley L. Hendricks, in which he wears a perfectly tailored white suit. In the 1970s, Hendricks produced a series of portraits of young black men, usually placed against monochromatic backdrops, that captured their self-assurance and confident sense of style.
This sartorial pride was also celebrated for Rashid Johnson, who walked Gabriela Hearst’s Fall 2025 show in Paris. Johnson wears a custom double-breasted peak lapel six-button blazer with a flare trouser. The suit is made out of custom black wool silk woven into a tonal herringbone jacquard with a black silk wool cady shirt.
Photo by James Dylan and Matt Weinberger
This sartorial pride was also celebrated for Rashid Johnson, who walked Gabriela Hearst’s Fall 2025 show in Paris. Johnson wears a custom double-breasted peak lapel six-button blazer with a flare trouser. The suit is made out of custom black wool silk woven into a tonal herringbone jacquard with a black silk wool cady shirt.
Photo by Matt Weinberger
Questlove wears a custom double-breasted six-button blazer with straight-cut trousers. The suit is made from black virgin wool barathea hand-embroidered with more than 30,000 freshwater pearls in a pinstripe pattern and worn with an ivory silk wool cady buttoned shirt.
For this design, we have taken cues from formal suiting trends, particularly the pinstripe, and reimagined it in a way that would celebrate Questlove’s brilliance. If the pinstripe pattern traditionally brings to mind European bankers, one thinks of the pinstripe historically signifying power and status. In our recreation, the pinstripe is constructed anew through the use of freshwater pearls that are finely hand-embroidered down the blazer and pant.
The embroidery of upwards of 30,000 freshwater pearls alone took more than 206 hours. It took 76 hours to embellish the suit trousers and 130 hours for the jacket. This work was all done by hand by skilled craftspeople in New York City. Canvassing and sewing the suit took another 72 hours, whilst the final tailoring assembly finishing details took another three days.
As Dr. Smith and Dr. Byrd said: “Black dandies make the subtle details pronounced.”
Photo by Karim Andreotti