Category: Bookish Style

The fantasy bard is very easy to dress badly.

I play Dungeons & Dragons regularly, so I know the wardrobe that starts assembling itself the moment somebody says bard. Begin with a white shirt whose sleeves have ambitions of their own. Add an embroidered waistcoat. Put something velvet over that, preferably in burgundy. Tie a scarf somewhere it does not need to be tied, add several rings, a pendant, a feathered hat and boots with just enough curl at the toe to create uncertainty about whether a jester is involved.

You now look unmistakably like a bard.

Unfortunately, you also look as though you may be required to sing for your supper.

The obvious solution is to tone everything down. I don’t think that is quite right.

A bard is a performer. Being noticed is not an unfortunate side effect of the clothes; it is part of the point. Colour, pattern, jewellery, unusual tailoring and fabrics that react beautifully to light all belong here. A coat that enters the room half a second before its wearer is entirely acceptable.

The challenge is not making a bard quieter. It is translating what fantasy clothing is trying to say into clothes that still make sense once the tavern becomes a pub, the lute disappears and somebody has to catch the bus home.

Continue reading

Dark academia is easy to recognise in photographs. There are shadowed libraries, old books, severe coats and enough brown wool to upholster a respectable country house.

Turning that atmosphere into clothes you can wear to work, the shops or a quiet drink is slightly more complicated.

Dark academia was not originally a clearly defined literary genre with agreed conventions. It is better understood as an aesthetic assembled and named after the fact: a mixture of academic nostalgia, classical literature, old institutions, sombre imagery and traditional clothing. In a peer-reviewed study of the subculture, literary scholar Simone Murray describes dark academia as an online performance of bookishness and identifies Donna Tartt’s The Secret History as its defining text.

The label is now also applied loosely to novels about elite schools, obsessive students, secret societies, intellectual ambition and the occasional murder that makes everyone’s reading schedule considerably less manageable.

Continue reading