Leather, feathers, and capes—oh, my! The glamour of the Met Gala promenade honoring Black dandyism. And, then, Ian Frazier takes a deep dive into the hazardous lives of New York City pigeons. Plus:

• Elon Musk’s supercomputer is polluting Memphis
• A boxing match in Times Square
• What we can learn from broken things

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.

Early on, Diana Ross showed up in a hat vibrant at its edges with a feathery fringe. She dragged a long, wide train behind her; it lay atop the carpet—midnight blue, not red—like a huge white tongue. The photographers howled with a lusty energy: “Over here!” “Stay in the center!” “RIGHT THERE!” If dandyism is, at least in part, a kind of showy restraint—being seen on purpose without caring so much about how the spectacle is apprehended by others—this was something like its zenith. Ross, always so cool, followed the photographers’ instructions with the simplest motions of her head and neck, as if she’d always meant things to turn out this way.

As more guests rolled in, I imagined what the photographers might have really wanted to say to certain eminences.

To Colman Domingo, that sweet man, wearing a pleated electric-blue cape and, later, sporting a big froofy polka-dot boutonniere appended to his checkered lapel: “PLEASE DO NOT RELEASE YOUR YEARS-LONG CHOKEHOLD ON RED-CARPET FASHION! A LITTLE TO THE LEFT!”

To Kim Kardashian, in her weird witch’s leather: “LOOK OVER YOUR SHOULDER, KIM! ALSO, PLEASE CALL YOUR EX-HUSBAND AND SOMEHOW GET HIM TO STOP TWEETING!”

To Kamala Harris, had she walked the carpet in her black-and-white silks: “CAN YOU TELL US ALL, IN DETAIL, HOW YOU ARRIVED AT THE DECISION TO BE HERE TONIGHT?”