The Met Gala sells itself as the height of fashion spectacle, but Black style has never needed museum steps to reach that level. Spectacle, in a Black context, has always existed without permission. It lives in the everyday, in the small luxuries built into routine, but nowhere more clearly than on Sunday mornings, where getting dressed demands precision, coordination, and care. What reads as excess on the carpet has long functioned as order elsewhere. The difference is not the practice. It is who gets recognized for it.
“Best-dressed spectacle is intrinsic to the Black experience. If there is any opportunity to show up, we will,” fashion and culture writer Scarlett Newman told EBONY. There is a long lineage of what could be considered high Black drag, the act of dressing as expression, armor, and pride. It gestures toward a kind of homegrown luxury, a concept André Leon Talley once distilled plainly: “You can be an aristocrat without being born into an aristocratic family.” The idea holds because it is rooted in a shared ethic. Take care of what you have. Wear it like it matters. Understand that luxury is a practice before it is a price point.
Sunday Best established that practice early. Getting dressed was intentional. Clothes were pressed the night before, colors were coordinated, and accessories were meticulously curated. It was a weekly exercise in discipline. The church offered visibility, but the standard was set at home. Grandmothers, mothers, and uncles defined what looked right, what held, and what lasted. In that sense, the household functioned as the first atelier.
“I first saw Black fashion as fine art in church,” says multidisciplinary artist Mars Scott. “My grandmother did not just shop. She studied. Fabric, stitching, texture, every detail carried meaning. What she wore on Sundays spoke before she did. Looking around, it was the same language in different dialects, each outfit saying something. It was an unspoken art rooted in belonging, confidence, and presence.”
If there is any moment that rivals the spectacle of the Met Gala, it is Easter Sunday. Feathered hats embellished to the brim. Sorbet-colored suits and dresses. Gloves, ties, cufflinks, polished loafers, every detail considered. A maximalist approach to Sunday Best that reads less as costume and more as declaration. Scholar and Superfine: Tailoring Black Style co-curator Monica L. Miller frames this tradition as a way Black communities assert themselves as “self-styling subjects,” not “costumed objects,” an ongoing act of visualizing freedom.
That lineage was on full display at the 2025 Costume Institute exhibition Superfine: Tailoring Black Style and its accompanying red carpet. Colman Domingo arrived in a patterned Valentino suit punctuated with a large floral boutonnière. Zendaya offered a kind of first-communion elegance in a white Louis Vuitton suit. Lauryn Hill leaned fully into an Easter color story, with yellow tailoring offset by an Easter-blue Hermès bag. Tessa Thompson paid homage to both the church fan and André Leon Talley with a commissioned piece by artist Chris Watts. What showed up on those steps was not an invention. It was a continuation.
Black designers and stylists have always understood this as an inheritance, not a trend. From Sergio Hudson and Kevin Hall to Law Roach, June Ambrose, Wayman Bannerman, and Micah McDonald, the work is less about invention and more about translation. The codes were established long before museum steps, in living rooms, front pews, full-length mirrors, and at grandma’s house.