Last night, global music powerhouse Burna Boy delivered one of the most striking and intentional fashion moments at the 2025 Met Gala, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
This year’s exhibition, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” with a focus on “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” explored the evolution of Black elegance and dandyism as both resistance and artform—stretching across centuries and continents.
Burna Boy arrived in a custom-designed ensemble by acclaimed British-Ghanaian designer Ozwald Boateng, widely credited with revolutionizing modern menswear through an African lens.
Together, they created a look that wasn’t just Met Gala-worthy—it was history-making.
The ensemble—a royal red wool tuxedo paired with a dramatic oxblood eel skin cape—was designed, in Boateng’s words, “not just for the carpet, but for history.”
Burna’s powerful silhouette echoed the spirit of African kingship, defiance, and excellence. As a son of the Niger Delta, the eel skin symbolized something even deeper: a tribute to his roots as a “waterside pikin,” where water, fish, and heritage form the very lifeblood of his people.
In his hand, Burna Boy carried a striking bouquet strapped in leather—a living tribute to resilience, heritage, and creative unity across Africa’s southern and western coasts.
Featuring native flora from South Africa like Protea, Gerbera, and Leonotis Leonurus, it honoured themes of healing, survival, and identity.
The inclusion of water-rooted flora like the Red Crinum lily quietly nodded to his Niger Delta origins—a subtle but powerful symbol of the intertwined relationship between nature, identity, and resistance.
This marks Burna Boy’s second Met Gala appearance, and once again, he used it to center African craftsmanship, story, and power on one of the world’s most iconic fashion stages. In collaboration with Ozwald Boateng, he brought forth a moment that was as much about legacy as it was about the future of global Black expression.
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