When it comes to camp, a quick Internet search will bring up the definition “ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical,” and, with a deeper dive, imagery of camp icons like Lady Gaga and Cher. While camp is all about being over-the-top in expressing your identity, and, at its foundation, is often explored through queer sexuality and sensibility, it is also oftentimes looked at primarily through a lens of whiteness. Yet camp as an aesthetic that relates to blackness spans many disciplines, from Vaudeville and minstrelsy performances and the golden age of Hollywood cinema to black beauty traditions like the Bronner Brothers International Beauty Show and the Detroit Hair Wars to the gay ball culture of the 1980s and the exaggerated, gaudy fashion ideals that came out of hip-hop.

This year’s Met Gala theme, “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” which framed itself around Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on Camp,” will “explore the origins of camp’s exuberant aesthetic and how the sensibility evolved from a place of [queer] marginality to become an important influence mainstream culture.” Like the camp aesthetic overall, Sontag’s essay appears to characterize camp as binary and ironic, applying the binaries to class and gender and seemingly ignoring race. In the essay’s list of “random examples of items which are part of the canon of camp,” the only person of color Sontag mentions appears to be the Cuban pop singer La Lupe. Many other notable essays and articles on camp leave black personalities off their lists, save for RuPaul and Nicki Minaj. But who are black icons of camp, and why aren’t they a part of the larger discourse, as icons or participants?

“One reason black culture is not within the ‘camp’ conversation is because the term itself has a lot of basis in theatrical, outlandish, exaggerated, and extreme fashion,” fashion historian Darnell Lisby tells Teen Vogue. “Even though I believe there are so many examples of ‘camp’ in black culture, there is a broad paint stroke over the black experience, which is perceived to be downtrodden instead of vibrant. In essence, it seems like many forget about icons like Prince or Jimmy Hendrix, who were the epitome of this term.”

BLACK CAMP FASHION

Cam'ron Djamilla Rosa Cochran/Getty Images

In her essay, Sontag states that “camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.” I can’t think of a better example of this than hip-hop’s influence on fashion — emerging from the intersection of race and class, hip-hop style has sartorial roots in artifice, opulence, and exaggeration. Cam’ron’s all-pink-everything outfit, from 2002, comes to mind as being highly stylized, but unpretentious. Visually, his extravagant take on male hip-hop style was, for its time, daring and ironic in how the outfit presented as hypermasculine while stunting head-to-toe in the hyperfeminine hue of baby pink.