The first time the painter Jordan Casteel saw the dress Charles Elliot Harbison designed for her to wear it with Gala this year, she immediately started crying.
“It was not only wonderful to see this item of clothing that is quite literally coordinated for me,” she said from her couch after her last assembly for what her first time will be when attending the event. “It is something that feels like they thought about me when designing from the beginning to the end.”
“This is a dream of fever,” she added.
While Mrs. Casteel had seen sketches and mood boards and constantly communicated with Mr. during the design process. Harbison, the summary came to life when she was in the room with the garment and the various tailors who picked and pricked the dress on her specific needs.
“I feel feminine, I feel fat,” she said about wearing the dress. “This is a moment when our freedom – there is the complexity of the world in which we exist, but for this day for this carpet we show up and this outfit gives me the feeling that I step in a version of myself that nobody would expect, but that I know I hear.”
She added: “I feel that I am powerful and I am beautiful and you will see me, my black body will be seen.”
Mrs. Casteel, 36, describes the dress as afro-futurism, or “the things we represent ourselves,” she said. “If I turned it on, I think it’s the female part that feels really good.”
The dress is really a two -part one: a skirt and a top. They both have strong volume points around the hip and Mrs. Casteel expects to reveal more and more as the night progresses. And although the dress is a central point of the night, it is what will not be seen from the red carpet that she feels the proudest to wear.
Under the dress will be a chain that was from Mrs Casteel’s grandmother, Margaret Buckner Young, who was author, educator and the first black woman who served on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“We all think of the dandies in our lives,” said Mrs. Casteel, referring to the theme of the gala this year. “She has formed herself. I am keeping her mind as close as possible at the moment.”
“This is for her,” she added. “That is also freedom.”
