The New Yorker:

By Vinson Cunningham
Cunningham is a critic for the magazine, and was a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

Every time I watch the glamorous Met Gala red carpet—as sure a sign of spring as the small bottle of Zyrtec sitting on my sink—I start worrying about the poor photographers. Like all journalists, they’ve got a pushy, unlovely, absolutely essential job to do. Like all artists, they’ve got to get it done with style. Last night, watching Vogue’s live stream of the event, eager to see how the famous walkers would handle the vast, untameable concept and legacy of the Black dandy in an era of attacks on D.E.I., I kept getting distracted by the photographers behind the flower-bedecked barricades.

The ur-dandy in my life—having grown up uptown—is the legendary Harlem designer and haberdasher Dapper Dan. You’d glimpse him, tall and elegant in some wild getup, promenading across 125th Street or down Lenox Avenue. The trick, though, was to shut up and let the man walk on; his vibe was “uninterrupted.” At the Met, though: forget it.

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