Ozwald Boateng, the Savile Row Designer Who Took Over the 2025 Met Gala

"With a return to menswear and a focus on Black style, Boateng’s tailoring captured exactly why the suit still matters."

"Ncuti Gatwa in Custom Ozwald Boateng at the 2025 Met Gala"

The 2025 Met Gala returned to menswear for the first time in over two decades. Titled Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, it moved away from costume and closer to cut.

While many approached the theme through loose references and symbolic flourishes, designer Ozwald Boateng treated the brief literally. Across the carpet, his work appeared on the likes of Burna Boy, Issa Rae, and Jaden Smith.

Who, then, is the designer responsible for dressing half the room?

"Left: ASAP Rocky on the cover of the VOGUE Met Gala issue, styled by Law Roche, wearing Ozwald Boateng and Margot Mckinney brooch; Right: Ozwald Boateng Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance, at the Apollo Theater"

Born in London to Ghanaian parents, Boateng became the first Black designer to open a store on Savile Row in the 1990s. His suits weren’t classic in the traditional sense, but sharpened, colour-saturated, and intentionally off-centre; reimagining the British silhouette by reclaiming who it could belong to.

At this year’s Gala, Boateng’s designs carried cumulative weight, featuring deep-toned silks, ceremonial structures, and Yoruba references across multiple guests.

The Costume Institute’s exhibition, curated by Andrew Bolton, explored how Black men have shaped sartorial language through the suit. It examined tailoring as both armour and articulation, tracing connections from the Zoot suit to the Congolese Sapeur, from hip-hop’s padded leathers to the church elder’s Sunday best. The exhibition positioned Black style within a tradition of strategic self-dress, where visibility has often meant risk, and elegance represents a form of resistance.

"Oswald Boetang. "

Boateng’s work belongs explicitly to this tradition. His tailoring operates with dual awareness: conscious of the British systems he trained in, and the visual heritage he inherited. His colour palettes draw deliberately from Ghanaian Kente cloth, spiritual iconography, and the chromatic boldness of West African dress. Structures borrow elements from Savile Row tradition but rarely adhere rigidly to its rules.

Tailoring itself carries a loaded history. As a colonial export, the suit was once imposed across the African continent as a measure of civility. Over time, it was adapted and reinterpreted, both literally and culturally. Boateng’s practice navigates this space between inheritance and interruption. His silhouettes maintain traditional formality, yet his language remains personal.

Boateng’s prominence at the Met Gala coincides with a moment when the fashion industry is reconsidering its histories. Questions of influence and authorship now shape collections beyond aesthetic references, prompting conversations around recognition, representation, and repair. It follows that in a year explicitly framed around Black sartorial traditions, Boateng’s approach would resonate. His designs are not merely responses to a thematic brief, but continuations of a dialogue he has sustained throughout his career.

"Left to right: Colin Kaepernick, Omar Sy, Jaden Smith; styled in Oswald Boetang"

The significance of Boateng’s visibility extends beyond individual acclaim, signalling a broader acknowledgment of the industry’s cultural and creative debts. By spotlighting tailoring as an art form shaped by Black craftsmanship and lived experience, the Gala implicitly highlights designers like Boateng, whose practices have long moved between margins and mainstream without altering their core ethos. His presence does not suggest novelty but rather affirms something consistently understood by those familiar with his work: innovation is not always about newness, and meaningful impact does not require spectacle.

Boateng’s appearance at the Met Gala, therefore, is less about arrival than about clarity. The cut, the cloth, and the history have always existed.

Perhaps only now is the broader industry acknowledging what was already there.