Why André 3000 Is Wearing Giant Piano on His Back at Met Gala 2025

When the musician attended back in 2008, he topped his white tuxedo with a straw fedora to ensure ain’t nobody dope as him.  

At the time, the musician-slash-actor (he most recently appeared in 2023’s Showing Up) was saying hey ya to his preppy ready-to-wear line Benjamin Bixby. 

The goal, he told New York magazine at the time, was to create a character “who’s kind of like your uncle, or your granddad, and he has a closet full of experiences and clothes, and he’s been around the world.”

The vibe was very deliberate, André sharing at a ComplexCon panel in 2017, “The reason I took that route was because hip-hop had this image of ‘we don’t wear these types of things’ and I knew we wore different clothes. So Benjamin Bixby was my personal way of trying to say, ‘This is how we do it.'” 

He visited Italian factories, scoured fabric showrooms in Paris and sketched the designs himself. 

“Unfortunately, I lost millions, to be honest,” he admitted of the self-funded effort. “It was an expensive lesson. But I can tell you, it was the best times, the best lessons in my life about my self and creating things.” 

These days, he’s more focused on creating films rather than fashions, but his personal style is still cooler than being cool. 

He loves “timeless” pieces, he detailed to New York, calling his looks a mix of “classic spontaneity” and “rebel gentleman.”

“There has to be something inventive about it,” he stressed of the ‘fits he puts together. “But not so inventive that it’s a turnoff. So that some of the greats, like Beau Brummell [an arbiter of British men’s fashion in the 19th century] or the Duke of Windsor, would nod and say, ‘Well done.’ Those guys killed it.”

Curious to see who else slayed at the 2025 Met Gala? Keep reading to see all the standout styles.