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Bulls, Bears and the Bellwether Hemline - Suzy Menkes

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  • Avantster
    ¤¤¤
    • Sep 2006
    • 1983

    Bulls, Bears and the Bellwether Hemline - Suzy Menkes




    Thought this was pretty entertaining.





    Bulls, Bears and the Bellwether Hemline



    Published: July 17, 2008





    PARIS





    IF only those hedge fund hotties had taken their eyes off their screens and looked at Angelina Jolie?s
    hemlines! Financial pundits should note that in the months since the
    movie star found that she was expecting twins and adopted a new
    ankle-length, hippie-de-luxe style, the stock market has followed her
    downward trajectory.





    The floor-sweeping style started a trend
    taken up by young Hollywood from Jessica Simpson to the über-stylist
    Rachel Zoe. Their look offers an eerie parallel with the 1970s ? the
    last time that recession and plummeting hemlines were in unison.





    Fashion
    is always a mirror of society. Thus, in a strange forecast of what the
    Federal Reserve discovered in the banking system, overexposure and
    total transparency in the wardrobe has been followed by complex
    cover-ups and a downward spiral. Fashion designers now seem clairvoyant.






    This summer?s collections ? shown last October, when stocks were still
    riding high ? were filled with long skirts. From classic Chanel to cool
    Christopher Kane, dresses were long and languorous or a waterfall of
    frills ? but always scraping the floor. Fashion had turned its back on
    the Paris Hilton girlie glitz: short, sheer dresses; sequinned sparkles; and any color as long as it?s pink.





    Why
    wasn?t Wall Street noting the sartorial changes? Although designers
    always dismiss the correlation between skirt lengths and financial
    markets
    as a fashion historian?s fantasy, the parallels are striking.
    Hemlines rose to dizzying heights in the financial and social whirl of
    the roaring 1920s ? revealing women?s legs for one of the first times
    in recorded history. Then came the bear market and bare was out ?
    except for low backs on the floor-length gowns that dropped hemlines
    just before the 1929 Wall Street crash.





    War always brings
    clothing back to the status quo
    , according to James Laver, the
    historian who traced the rise and fall of waistlines as symbolic of
    social upheaval in his sweeping study ?Costume: The Arts of Man,?
    published in 1963. The end of World War II (and the arrival of
    Christian Dior) brought waists and hemlines back to ?normal.? But as
    soon as the economy expanded in the 1960s, up and away went miniskirts
    ? only to crash with the financial troubles in the 1970s. And so the
    graph of skirt lengths has continued in tandem with Western economies
    with the 15-year run of bull markets reflected in short-and-sweet
    dresses.





    You could put the current fashion down to boredom and
    a desire for change. Or, in the case of Jolie and other actresses like
    Jessica Alba and Gwen Stefani, a way of maternity dressing that elongates a puffy silhouette and conceals swollen ankles and veined legs.





    But
    that simplistic view does not explain why the long skirts have caught
    on even with young French women, who traditionally have always worn
    short, slim outfits. The fact that Jolie?s maternity wardrobe of
    high-waisted, floor-sweeping dresses came from Gérard Darel, a
    middle-market French clothing company, rather than from either a
    designer resource or a fast fashion chain, proves that there is a
    pent-up demand for the look. Expect a new version of the maxi coat to
    surface for winter.





    Yet the absolute connection between finance and fashion remains more hunch than reality. Harold Koda, curator in charge of the Costume Institute
    at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, instigated a research project
    at Harvard Business School to try and nail the reality of the myth.






    ?There were many exceptions ? the rule does not always apply,? said Mr.
    Koda, who himself looked at the idea that ?flush times mean higher
    hemlines? by taking expansive fashion way back to the 1860s.





    ?What
    you can say is that any great designer has his or her finger on the
    pulse of society,? Mr. Koda said. ?And when you are psychologically
    battered and feel a sense of encroaching pessimism, there is a tendency
    to cover up ? whether that means long sleeves, higher necklines, long
    skirts or opaque tights.?





    Mr. Koda has just returned from Moscow,
    where he noted skirts as brief and as thin as the veneer of luxury and
    glamour covering the party players in the city. The sky-high hemlines
    reinforce the hemline theory: in a country like Russia, where the
    economy is expanding and ostentatious consumption is the height of
    fashion, long skirts are nowhere to be seen.





    Contrast that
    situation with the American mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
    tottering on the brink of commercial collapse and you see why the vogue
    for long dresses should have infiltrated even Hollywood, where the
    screenwriters? strike last year added to the gloom coating the habitual
    glitz and glamour. As fashionistas might put it when asked why they
    voted for plunging hemlines: ?It?s the economy, stupid.?









    let us raise a toast to ancient cotton, rotten voile, gloomy silk, slick carf, decayed goat, inflamed ram, sooty nelton, stifling silk, lazy sheep, bone-dry broad & skinny baffalo.
  • Faust
    kitsch killer
    • Sep 2006
    • 37852

    #2
    Re: Bulls, Bears and the Bellwether Hemline - Suzy Menkes

    These articles come out every time the market takes a prolonged dive. Same articles were popping up after the dotcom bust.
    Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

    StyleZeitgeist Magazine

    Comment

    • Avantster
      ¤¤¤
      • Sep 2006
      • 1983

      #3
      Re: Bulls, Bears and the Bellwether Hemline - Suzy Menkes



      Harold Koda, curator in charge of the Costume Institute
      at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, instigated a research project
      at Harvard Business School to try and nail the reality of the myth.



      Now if I can find this research I'll have the perfect reason to be looking at runway shots at work. [86]

      let us raise a toast to ancient cotton, rotten voile, gloomy silk, slick carf, decayed goat, inflamed ram, sooty nelton, stifling silk, lazy sheep, bone-dry broad & skinny baffalo.

      Comment

      • Faust
        kitsch killer
        • Sep 2006
        • 37852

        #4
        Re: Bulls, Bears and the Bellwether Hemline - Suzy Menkes

        [quote user="Avantster"]

        Harold Koda, curator in charge of the Costume Institute
        at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, instigated a research project
        at Harvard Business School to try and nail the reality of the myth.



        Now if I can find this research I'll have the perfect reason to be looking at runway shots at work. [86]



        [/quote]



        LOL, Wow, that's so ridiculous.

        Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

        StyleZeitgeist Magazine

        Comment

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