Academia

Spring 2024 & Spring 1984

Academia reappeared on the Spring 2024 runways with the quiet inevitability of midterm season—an aesthetic motif revisited like a well-worn thesis. It’s an improvisation on an old theme, perhaps because it flatters the wearer’s internal monologue: reflective, clever, and slightly better read than everyone else in the room.

At its core, the look romanticizes the life of the mind—the joys of being clever, of sparring intellectually with one’s romantic equal (preferably tenured), and of winning arguments.

Academia also reopens old dramas: the bittersweet crises of coming-of-age, the burden of early promise, the seductive idea that one might survive simply by being smart—strategically, charmingly.

The style idealizes hard-earned brilliance: results earned less by legacy than by late nights and caffeine, punctuated by moments of aesthetic rebellion (a mismatched sock, a fraying hem, a necktie worn with intent).

Dress codes become narrative devices—uniforms that build identity, or costumes in a play one didn’t audition for but insists on rewriting. Academia, in this mode, is less a look than a slide deck of one’s permanent vacation—a retrospective of boarding school heartbreaks and philosophical awakenings.

There’s also the myth of genius, dutifully invoked: ten percent inspiration, ninety percent perspiration, plus a touch of tweed and the assumption that quoting Barthes is a personality.

This season, designers played with these motifs with both reverence and mischief. Miu Miu offered prep-school uniforms disheveled just enough to suggest detention by design. Marni’s café-society misfits lounged in intellectual nonchalance, while Chanel’s secretaries knew exactly which memo would break the rules.

Coperni and Chopova Lowena riffed on the schoolgirl skirt, with a wink to Kronthaler-era Westwood, where punk meets prefect. JW Anderson rendered the whole ensemble in surreal claymation, giving new shape to rule-breaking. And Dries Van Noten turned the rugby shirt into a kind of wearable contradiction—controlled flamboyance with a side of reading list.

In sum: Academia as aesthetic remains durable because it flatters us. It says, quietly but insistently, that we are protagonists—bookish, burdened, brilliant—and dressed to prove it.

Celine

Vuitton

Dries

Prada

PH5, Academia, School Uniform, Spring 2024 Runway

PH5

Miu Miu

Marni

Mark Fast

Loewe

Westwood

JW Anderson, Academia, School Uniform, Spring 2024 Runway

Gucci

Lowena

Chanel

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