Dapper Dan On the Symbolism Behind His Met Gala 2025 Look

Even at 80, Dapper Dan remains a lifelong student.

“All through the night, I watched documentaries on things that I want to talk about while I’m on the red carpet,” he told Vanity Fair shortly before attending the Met Gala 2025 to celebrate the opening of the Costume Institute’s new exhibit, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” This included a documentary on the groundbreaking Black actress Dorothy Dandridge, and footage of her performing the song “Zoot Suit” alongside Paul White in 1942.

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For the exhibition’s theme, focused on the history and transforming contexts of Black dandyism, the designer, whose own work appears in the show, explained how he wanted his look to reference the zoot suits of the Harlem Renaissance. “The zoot suit symbolizes the freedom that we have associated with the dandy,” he said. Representing Harlem, where he’s lived for most of his life, was an especially personal directive too.

In 1982, he opened his haberdashery shop Dapper Dan’s Boutique on 125th Street, where his signature “knock-ups” (one-of-a-kind garments featuring remixed luxury logos like Louis Vuitton and Gucci) became iconic pieces of their own. LL Cool J, Bobby Brown, Mike Tyson, and members of Run DMC were among his clientele.

A trademark infringement lawsuit forced him to shutter the business in 1992, but in 2017, a surprising turn of events—Gucci acknowledged being influenced by one of Dapper Dan’s own designs—led to a collaboration and the reopening of his atelier in 2018. That year also marked Dapper Dan’s first Met Gala appearance and his shift from fashion outsider to a widely recognized cultural figure.

For this year’s Met Gala, Dapper Dan used an actual zoot suit from the Harlem Renaissance era as a model to fashion his own entirely sequin-covered version, featuring both a Sankofa symbol in tiny print and a large Sankofa emblem of a bird with its head turned backward adorning the back of his jacket. “The symbol means ‘Go back to get.’ Go back and get so we can go forward. If we all go back first, we can come together,” he said.

As though the all-sequined ensemble didn’t require enough heavy lifting up the Met’s red-carpeted steps (“It is heavy,” he acknowledged), there was also a suite of Cartier jewelry to layer on, starting with a pyramid-cut diamond pinky ring that reminded the designer of his neighborhood’s early Italian presence. “During the Harlem Renaissance period, one of the biggest influences that a lot of people don’t realize were the Italians in Harlem,” he said. “We had the San Gennaro festival.”

There was also a multi-strand gold chain necklace—a nod to the Latinos and West Indians in the neighborhood—a bejeweled flower brooch, a gold pocket watch, and a signature Cartier panther ring that was an especially noteworthy addition to the ensemble’s various cultural references: “The panther is symbolic to the music that came out of the Congo, that went through Cuba, that was responsible for Afro-Cuban jazz.”

While Dapper Dan had outfitted other celebrities for the Met Gala on past occasions, he was his sole client this year, instead opting to preserve his creative stamina. “I don’t want to leak out any energy. It takes something out of me, and it takes something out of the people who I dress,” he said. But that only makes him more excited to see who shows up and turns out for the major occasion, especially with the show’s theme in mind.

“It’s so important to people of color…. This one shouldn’t be just about being elegantly dressed or very superfly,” he said. As a member of the gala’s host committee this year, he said he plans to hold guests accountable too.

“This is a Cinderella event…. So, I mean, put your glass slippers on, and let’s get busy.”

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