A Comprehensive Guide to the Academia Aesthetic

The typical pillars of education have never felt less universal as COVID-19 continues to disrupt classic learning environments. With paths to graduation or a degree halted, delayed, or pivoted to a virtual format, the pursuit of knowledge looks different all around the world. Online, however, a digital subculture that’s been around for years is thriving with a renewed fervor: academia, the aesthetic dedicated to the scholarly. 

Academia refers to a style that is influenced by learning—think tweed blazers and cozy reading nooks, perfect for spending hours in while studying. The aesthetic then divides into sub-categories like dark academia, darkest academia, light academia, art academia, and even romantic academia and chaotic academia. Marked by warm tones, woolen textures, and a more analog sensibility, academia is the ideal comforting trend for winter. 

Here, L'OFFICIEL walks through a no-nonsense guide to academia and its many sub-classes.

The academia aesthetic views knowledge as king, and its subscribers have formed a welcoming community around the desire to learn. Just as anyone and everyone can be a scholar, academia is open to all who value intelligence and sophistication, meaning it’s a particularly welcoming community for androgynous, non-binary, and LGBTQ+ individuals. The academia aesthetic revolves around the classics—in dressing, novels, movies, architecture—but it’s progressive when it comes to breaking stereotypes related to gender and fluidity in aesthetics. 

Looking to the heritage of Ivy League universities for inspiration, academia seeks to emulate the sophistication and status of established educational institutions. The elitism of these groups gives academia a sense of legacy, while also being subverted by a more diverse community.

A key element to embracing the classics is nostalgia. Many followers of academia find inspiration from imagining private school life in the early 19th and 20th centuries, particularly from films like Dead Poets Society (1989) and School Ties (1992).

Anyone who identifies with academia reveres simple, sophisticated dressing. Anything you’d see on an Oxbridge, Ivy League, or Hogwarts student is a staple: black turtlenecks, wool/tweed/plaid coats, smart trousers, and ties are necessities in any academia look. A worn satchel is always better than a designer handbag, especially if it’s filled with thick, dog-earred novels. 

The dark academia aesthetic adds a gothic twist with a neutral color palette (greys, browns, and blacks), gloomy photos, and existential poetry. On TikTok, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram, dark academia accounts post outfit ideas often accessorized with stale coffee-cups, novels, or rained-on windows. Ralph Lauren’s Fall/Winter 2016 show is particularly prevalent on dark academia inspo pages, and an image of Imaan Hammam bundled up in a tie and wool vest shows up again and again.

Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, a murder mystery novel published in 1992, exemplifies the academia aesthetic, particularly for the dark academia subculture. In the novel, a group of clever students at an elite New England college invent their own way of thinking that eventually leads to the murder of their friend. Tartt’s description of campus life at a hallowed university—including the clothing that comes with it—is enamoring and intriguing for dark academia fans. 

If We Were Villians by M.L. Rio also serves as an essential inspiration for the aesethic. “We were always surrounded by books and words and poetry, all the fierce passions of the world bound in leather and vellum,” Rio writes.

In film, the biographical thriller Kill Your Darlings has an academia following for its dark depiction of writers Allen Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac's classmate relations gone wrong.  and the novel “If We Were Villains” by M.L. Rio serves as essential inspiration for the aesthetic. 

Dark academia has risen as one of the most popular translations of the academia aesthetic as it takes over TikTok, a platform heavily populated by teen users. While light academia offers a more romantic and physically bright take on the trend and art academia focuses on paintings and sculptures rather than texts and films, something about the comforting gloominess of dark academia has captivated Gen Z, pop culture’s leaders of online hyper-curation.

The Internet is a reliable tool for easy aesthetic curation, but online inspo accounts take academia inspiration from real life, too. As temperatures drop and dark academics picture themselves holed up in a library with snow falling outside, the runways are filled with heavy coats, plaid sweaters, and neutral tones.