Another Oxford Hilary, the term of bleak midwinter. Utterly bereft of Christmas sparkle, the season forces us to focus on our studies, with libraries becoming a refuge as the weather worsens. Reflecting Oxford’s heritage as a romanticised stronghold of academic tradition, the style of dark academia, while it helps us to ward off the worst of the seasonal chills, hints at the class politics underpinning the University. It is an aesthetic rooted in male-dominated institutions of wealth and knowledge, much like the iconic ‘sub-fusc’ academic dress.
The unfortunate stereotypes are not entirely inaccurate here, with the tweed-clad, bespectacled professor cast as this season’s unexpected fashion icon. Romanticisation meets subversion, with Pinterest boards collating a mixture of aesthetics and influences: Victoriana, Claudia Winkleman on The Traitors, and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Through its long wool overcoats dark academia presents us with a fiction of a past Oxford, but one that illuminates an ecologically sensitive approach for the future.
Glorifying the library as a fortress of knowledge, the dark academia colour palette comes straight from the half-lit gloom of the Duke Humfrey’s: rosewood, burnished leather, and aged manuscript pages imbue tweeds and corduroy trousers with their tones. This style is built on the fantasy of an ‘old money’ lineage, as with much at Oxford. Artfully shabby, dark academia glorifies not only the pursuit of knowledge, but also its privilege, one which has historically been afforded to male circles in the upper echelons of society. Although it is an aesthetic adopted by many today, the masculine tailoring of dark academia’s key garments – Oxford shirts, bags, and brogues – reflects the University’s historical cohort of wealthy, white men. Age, in this instance, is an accolade, displaying both Oxford’s prestige and that of the individual wearer through an exclusionary fostering of ‘Englishness’.
Although it does nothing to brighten the leaden British skies, dark academia’s earthy tones imply a connection to land as property. Its iconography is tied to archetypes of the English country house, only minorly adjusted from the garments worn for a weekend hunting party. Tweed originated as a practical material for rural workers, made from their own flocks. English estate tweeds, however, emerged in the Victorian era as variations on the classic plaid. They circumvented the disrespect of wearing clan tartan when English aristocracy was increasingly purchasing impoverished Scottish estates. Crisp shirts were paired with straggly scarves, battered overcoats, and round glasses. Affiliations with the ‘Sloane Ranger’ (that horsey paradigm of upper-class affluence) run deep, but given dark academia’s hand in imaging Oxford’s male exclusivity, signet rings eclipse Granny’s pearls as choice embellishment. Yet, at least they are already in the family jewellery safe, hardly a non-recyclable purchase from a high street brand with suspiciously opaque sustainability policies. Dark academia fashion also encourages deeper environmental consciousness, with an emphasis on material traceability and high-quality, small-scale craftsmanship, especially important in an age where fast fashion titans indulge our willingness to trade conscience for convenience. No one adopting it would be caught dead wearing a crackly polyester hybrid – dark academia fashion prioritises hand-me-downs, vintage and natural materials, making it a style of timeless transgression.
Few fully-suited, brogue-wearing tutors remain in Oxford – arguably for the better, considering the discriminatory foundations of dark academia style. However, this makes it ripe for a subversive rebrand: its dandyish decorum is adopted to challenge heteronormativity, with women wearing it to walk to the Bodleian as visibly as men. It is evident that Oxbridge remains most accessible to the upper class (apparently intending to stay that way, if Cambridge’s ‘reverse discrimination’ admissions are anything to go by). Undeniably, dark academia style is tied to this, with the sourcebook based on a wealthy, white, and male vision of academia – a triple threat indeed. Yet this is exactly what makes it ideal for reconstitution, satirising and subverting the exclusionary English education system from the foundations, and ultimately diversifying Oxford’s image through wider, personal stylisation.
