Key Takeaways

• Each Black Met Gala co-chair brought a distinct vision that influenced the event’s theme and execution.
• Their presence helped spotlight underrepresented narratives in fashion and art.
• One Met Gala featured four Black male co-chairs for the first time, marking a new milestone.

The Met Gala might be “fashion’s biggest night,” but for Black culture, it doubles as a global stage. The co-chairs aren’t just posing on the stairs, either. They help shape the theme, guest list, and how the Costume Institute’s ideas hit the wider world. The benefit itself dates back to the late ‘40s, but the modern Wintour-era version has turned those themes into full-blown cultural events.

Over time, Black creatives and entertainers helped turn the gala into a rotating case study on style, politics, and power. TV icons sit next to athletes, poets, rappers, and blockbuster filmmakers, all attached to some of the Met’s most ambitious exhibitions. Those shows stretch from rewiring ideas of what America consists of to putting Black tailoring at the center of the museum’s calendar.

In no particular order, check out the Black celebrities who handled the role below. For the sake of clarity, those who received honorary chair distinctions (ex. Beyoncé for “Punk: Chaos to Couture” and LeBron James for “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”) weren’t included. Think of it as a syllabus: Oprah opening the door for “American Woman,” Rihanna going full papal regalia, Zendaya and Pharrell returning like they never left, and one year being an entire Black chair slate. Themes shift, but the imprint stays.

1. Oprah Winfrey and Patrick Robinson — American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity

Oprah and Gap design executive Patrick Robinson co-chaired the “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity” gala, tying Black star power to a show about how U.S. womanhood evolved from heiresses and Gibson Girls to flappers and screen sirens. The exhibition framed fashion as a mirror of women’s social and political shifts, and Oprah centered Black media power inside that story.

2. Idris Elba — Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology

Idris Elba joined Taylor Swift and Apple’s Jony Ive as co-chair for “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology,” a show unpacking the line between handcraft and machine-made design. The exhibition explored how designers reconcile couture-level craftsmanship with advanced tech, so having a tech-loving actor and DJ as co-chair made the gala’s futurist storyline feel less theoretical and more lived-in.

3. Pharrell Williams — Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between

Pharrell Williams co-chaired the Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons gala, built around “Art of the In-Between,” which celebrated the designer’s boundary-pushing silhouettes and refusal to play by fashion’s normal rules. A longtime Kawakubo disciple with a CdG fragrance collab and Billionaire Boys Club boutiques that stock the label, Pharrell brought real fan energy and Hip Hop credibility to one of the Met’s most conceptual themes, blurring streetwear and couture.

4. Rihanna — Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination

Rihanna’s co-chair turn for “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” came with the now-legendary papal-inspired Maison Margiela look: Mitre, bejeweled mini, and matching robe. The exhibition explored fashion’s relationship to Catholic imagery, from Vatican vestments to couture. Her outfit made that conversation feel like pop culture liturgy, and the image still circulates as shorthand for Met Gala commitment.

5. Serena Williams — Camp: Notes on Fashion

Serena Williams co-chaired “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” the Met’s deep dive into exaggeration, irony, and theatrical style. Pulling up in neon Versace and sneakers, she turned a supposedly rarefied dress code into something that felt like sports, Black luxury, and high-fashion humor colliding on the same carpet in one look. It was textbook camp but rooted in her own lane.

6. Naomi Osaka and Amanda Gorman — In America: A Lexicon of Fashion

For “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” poet Amanda Gorman and tennis champion Naomi Osaka shared co-chair duties alongside Billie Eilish and Timothée Chalamet, a Gen Z crew chosen to represent modern American style. The exhibition built a kind of vocabulary for U.S. fashion, focusing on emotion-based “keywords,” and their global backgrounds underlined how Black creativity and activism already shape that language on and off the runway.

7. Regina King — In America: An Anthology of Fashion

Regina King helped lead “In America: An Anthology of Fashion,” the cinematic follow-up that staged mini films about U.S. style inside the Met’s historic period rooms. The show spotlighted overlooked designers and stories from American history’s margins. Putting an Oscar-winning director and actor in the co-chair seat for an exhibition built like a movie set was the perfect loop between Black Hollywood and museum storytelling.

Notably, King did not walk the proverbial red carpet for that specific year (the above image is from the aforementioned “Camp” exhibit; some outlets speculated that the tragic loss of her son months prior led to that decision

8. Michaela Coel — Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty

When the Met honored “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” Michaela Coel joined the co-chair lineup with Dua Lipa, Penélope Cruz, and Roger Federer. The exhibition traced how Lagerfeld translated sketch lines into era-defining garments for houses like Chanel and Fendi. Having a Black British writer-director at the center of that tribute felt like a quiet remix, bringing the perspective of someone who has already re-written TV rules to a show about fashion icons.

9. Zendaya — Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion

Zendaya’s return as co-chair for “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” — with a “Garden of Time” dress code — was pure theater. The exhibition explored nature, ephemerality, and how fragile garments are “reawakened” through technology and spectacle in the archive. Her carpet performance doubled down on that idea, turning the stairs into a storyboard for how clothes live, die, and live again in the culture.

10. Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, and Pharrell Williams — Superfine: Tailoring Black Style

“Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” gave us an all-star Black menswear brain trust: Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, and Pharrell Williams as co-chairs. The exhibition traces Black dandyism and tailored style across centuries, drawing on scholarship by Monica L. Miller and centering Black identities in the Costume Institute’s galleries. Their own style histories turned the night into living proof that suits, grills, grids, and race cars can all be radical tools — and serious fundraisers.

11. Beyoncé and Venus Williams — Costume Art

Beyoncé and Venus Williams scored co-chair honors for “Costume Art” alongside Nicole Kidman and Anna Wintour in conjunction with new Costume Institute galleries. The exhibition aligns with how artists and designers represent the dressed body — from classical sculpture to pregnancy and aging — across about 200 works. Two Black icons helping to define that specific chapter make the Met’s future look a lot more like the world outside its steps.