The dress code for the 2025 Met Gala has been announced, and this year menswear is taking center stage.

In conjunction with the upcoming exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” the annual event’s dress code will ask attendees and designers to create outfits under the umbrella of “Tailored for You,” Vogue announced Tuesday.

The star-studded gala, and the exhibit it serves to promote, each raise money for the museum’s Costume Institute. This year’s presentation is “a cultural and historical examination of the Black dandy, from the figure’s emergence in Enlightenment Europe during the 18th century to today’s incarnations in cities around the world,” the Met reports.

Inspired by Monica L. Miller’s book, “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity,” the exhibit will celebrate Black menswear style through the ages, and carve out a new definition of the “dandy” in the popular imagination.

Defined as “a man unduly devoted to style,” the term became associated with Black men in 18th-century Europe as a trend of smartly dressed servant staff emerged. Once imposed, it has in the years since been reclaimed to express the evolution of an ever-sharpening, ever-influential, ever-appropriated Black style.

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

“Dandyism offered Black people an opportunity to use clothing, gesture, irony, and wit to transform their given identities and imagine new ways of embodying political and social possibilities,” a release from the Met alongside the exhibit’s announcement reads.

When is the 2025 Met Gala?

The Met Gala, which has been chaired by Wintour since 1995, is set to return to The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 5. 

What is the 2025 Met Gala dress code?

The dress code, “Tailored for You,” will coincide with the “Superfine” Costume Institute exhibit, which will be on public view from May 6 to Oct. 26.

The code is “purposefully designed to provide guidance and invite creative interpretation,” according to Vogue, whose top editor Anna Wintour co-chairs the event. As in years past, some fashion houses will likely be strict constructionists, veering toward literal interpretations of the theme, while others will take it as a mere jumping-off point.

Who are the Met Gala 2025 co-chairs?

LeBron James will serve as honorary co-chair while Pharrell Williams, Colman Domingo, A$AP Rocky and Lewis Hamilton are also slated to be co-chairs of the event. Wintour, who is largely seen as the mastermind behind the fashion world’s biggest event, will return as co-chair as well.

Which celebrities are attending Met Gala 2025?

While it has not yet been announced which celebrities will grace the museum’s famous steps come May, the host committee was announced today. According to Vogue, the list includes André 3000, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Grace Wales Bonner, Simone Biles and husband Jonathan Owens, Jordan Casteel, Dapper Dan, Doechii, Ayo Edebiri, Edward Enninful, Jeremy O. Harris, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Rashid Johnson, Regina King, Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee, Audra McDonald, Janelle Monáe, Jeremy Pope, Angel Reese, Sha’Carri Richardson, Olivier Rousteing, Tyla, Usher, and Kara Walker. 

That the group spans artists, writers, musicians and taste-makers within the Black community comes as no surprise as the museum − which has fallen under criticism for insensitive themes in the past − gears up to embrace a gala inextricably bound to Black identity.

Met Gala 2024 theme and co-chairs

The 2024 Met Gala theme was “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” which was also the name of the accompanying exhibit at the Costume Institute. The Met Gala theme is typically different from the dress code, but still related.

Last year’s dress code was “The Garden of Time,” inspired by J.G. Ballard’s 1962 short story of the same title, per Vogue, and featured celebrities and taste makers in garden-themed garb. The 2024 Met Gala co-chairs were Wintour alongside Latin music superstar Bad Bunny, multi-hyphenate Jennifer Lopez, “Euphoria” A-lister Zendaya and “Thor” star Chris Hemsworth.

Contributing: Jay Stahl