Dark Academia

About

Dark Academia is a movement and an aesthetic most commonly found on Instagram and TikTok. The aesthetic is inspired by the arts, literature, and English boarding schools and New England Ivy League campuses, particularly their depictions on television and film. Properties commonly associated with the aesthetic include blazers, parchment, fall color themes, romanticizing life in an upscale boarding school, and many "cozy" elements similar to the cottagecore aesthetic.

Origin

The Dark Academia aesthetic first gained prominence online in 2017 through Instagram users five.of.swords^[1] and f3lixculpa,^[2] who shared posts following the aesthetic and describing it to newcomers (example shown below, left). This inspired other users to make dark academia moodboards based on their posts (example shown below, right).

Spread

The aesthetic gained further traction on Tumblr,^[3] where users share photographs, poetry, and literary quotes fitting the Dark Academia aesthetic, as well as ironic posts poking fun at the aesthetic (example shown below). Notable examples of media that the Dark Academia aesthetic borrows from include the films Dead Poets Society and Kill Your Darlings. Novels and poetry from the Beat Generation are commonly quoted. A long list of media inspiring the aesthetic is available on the Dark Academia Fandom page.^[4]

The aesthetic found its way to TikTok sometime in 2019. One of the earliest examples of Dark Academia on TikTok came on October 13th, 2019, uploaded by caelum.ii (shown below).

Around August of 2020, the Dark Academia aesthetic started gaining more steam on TikTok, both ironically and honestly. On August 29th, TikToker miss__mae uploaded a video of what appears to be a New England town under the hashtag #darkacademia, garnering over 1.6 million views in under two months (shown below, left). On October 3rd, TikToker ya.rv posted a video under the hashtag #darkacademia, garnering over 2.5 million views in 13 days (shown below, right). On October 6th, TikToker maddalenadelgobbo posted a video romanticizing

On October 7th, Refinery29 published a piece hypothesizing that the pandemic had an effect on Dark Academia's popularity, as it focuses on a romanticization of learning.^[5] Other publications that have detailed the aesthetic include Vox,^[6] and Vice.^[7]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References