Emily Ratajkowski Brings Light Academia Style to Tory Burch's New Eyewear Campaign

Academia-core has been building since 2024, and Tory Burch just handed it its most polished campaign moment yet. Emily Ratajkowski fronted the brand's Spring/Summer 2026 Kira eyewear campaign, which dropped March 11, wearing a look so precisely calibrated to the preppy-intellectual aesthetic that it read less like a campaign and more like a mood board for the whole season.

The outfit's architecture was deliberate. Ratajkowski wore a cream pleated knee-length A-line skirt with extra-long, thick belt loops that framed a black embellished belt, the kind of structured detail that separates a reference from a costume. The skirt swooshed with every step. Paired with it: a teal ribbed tank on slinky straps scattered with dainty ribbons, a coquettecore softness that kept the look from tipping into strict prep territory. The tension between those two pieces, the schoolgirl skirt and the ribbon-trimmed tank, is exactly what makes light academia work as a grown-up aesthetic rather than a throwback.

The eyewear was the point. Ratajkowski wore the Kira Cat Eye Eyeglasses, priced at $210, in a transparent sage trim that pulled directly from the greens already present in her teal top. The Kira line is defined by oversized frames and chevron-textured temples, details that lean architectural without going avant-garde. On Ratajkowski, they read as the outfit's anchor: scholarly enough to sell the aesthetic, refined enough to actually wear.

Ratajkowski's involvement with Tory Burch runs deeper than a single campaign booking. She is a longtime endorser of the label and a fixture on its New York Fashion Week runways. She walked the brand's Spring/Summer 2026 show last September, and fronting the corresponding eyewear campaign was a natural extension of that relationship. The continuity matters: she is not parachuted into the brand's world for a single moment, and the campaign imagery reflects that ease.

The broader trend context is worth noting. The fashion industry's lean into academia-core since 2024 has pushed the schoolgirl silhouette through several iterations, with most labels opting for the blazer-and-loafer route. Tory Burch's version, anchored by a pleated skirt and oversized opticals, skips the obvious signifiers and lands somewhere more specific: the well-read girl at the end of spring semester, not the fall-catalogue cliché. It's a small but meaningful distinction, and Ratajkowski wears it convincingly.