The Mood Board: Dark Academia, and Other Vibes
OK, so in primary school I once dressed as Hugh Grant’s character in Notting Hill for some culture-based fancy dress thing. Was it needlessly sophisticated for a small C of E school in rural Dorset? Probably. Did it creep out the teachers, who wondered why there was a jibbering, vaguely sexualised toff mingling with the Tracy Beakers, the Boggises, the Bunces and the Beans? Almost certainly.
But maybe – and I’m clinging to this hypothesis with all my might – maybe I was just dabbling in a little ‘dark academia’ without even knowing it. You know, dark academia… the aesthetic and lifestyle people adopt by dressing as, and acting like, gothic bookish types of yore. Will Thacker, Grant’s character in the movie, ran a bookshop and had horn rimmed spectacles and dopey hair and a corduroy blazer, so I’m just going to put him down as a literary spook, crush the memory deep down into the basement of my mind-library and move on with my life.
I only learned about dark academia this week. According to Wikipedia, it "centres on higher education, writing, the arts, and classic Greek and Gothic architecture, as well as romantic longing and death. Like cottagecore, goblincore, and grandmacore [sic], it gained popularity on the online platforms TikTok and Tumblr."
I think it’s quite rad, actually. Why not be a computer programmer by sunlight, and a latter-day Byron by the moon? The whole early 19th Century sad lothario thing is a vibe! Did you see Little Women? Timothy looked mega in that little waistcoat. And all the windswept floppy hair and cheekbones and neckerchiefs and opium and long nights by the fire and summers on the Heath and fathers lost in battle really do meld into an aesthetic that I can get onboard with. It’s pure nostalgia for a time that we couldn’t have possibly experienced, which is the best kind of nostalgia. Because it’s made up.
I didn't realise the extent of recognised aesthetics; it's a smorgasbord. There are Health Goths! Teslapunks! Softpeople! Mushroomcore-ers! And thousands more! Maybe I could be a Softperson?? At a time when it feels like the world is crumbling, it's really heartening to be reminded that people are fucking weird, in the best possible ways. The fact that Teslapunks (Steampunks, with a leaning toward Nikola Tesla) exist is a tonic to the insipid misery of Covid.
Anyway, here are three more aesthetics I'd like to see brought into life:
Mumcore
The sister-energy of Dadcore. Nice flat shoes from Ecco, a big fleece for dog walks, ultra-narrow reading glasses that slide into a little tube the size of a pack of Rolos. Floral-based fragrances only. When using social media hold phone at arm’s length and squint at the screen before shaking head and giving up. Hobbies include the sending of hi-res pictures in the body of an email, being kind, and explaining that "the leftover potatoes will only go in the bin if you don’t eat them."
Pittcore
The admirable but ultimately futile attempt to emulate Brad Pitt’s astonishing elan. You can try for the hair, but you’ll miss and land somewhere in Robbie Savage territory. You can buy the Brioni tux, but you can’t buy the 56-year-old rig that fills it, a rig hewn from the same granite as Mount Rushmore. Probably. You can spend the day giving out free grocery boxes to people in South LA, but when you stop for a smoke break, you won’t look roguish, kind and manly, you’ll just look tired and smug. (But still, feel free to do charity work, yeah?)
RadagastTheBrownCore
A life dedicated to the emulation of Tolkien’s wizard of the woods. Key concerns include the inherent power of nature, the potential kinship of animals (that we so cruelly deny!) and the complete and total defeat of Sauron, the Lord of the Rings. Aesthetic is beyond rustic, in fact the aesthetic is only achieved by first disregarding any attention to aesthetic and moving to a wooded area. You may want to wash your clothes; don’t. You may want to scrub the crusted bird shit from your shoulder; you mustn’t. The bird will be offended and stop giving you information on the movements of Uruk-hai in the area.
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