5:54 p.m.
Are fashion designers prescient? Or do they just have a really sensitive finger on the cultural pulse?
Autumn looks for women of substance
“Much has been written – and often derided – about hems and waistlines as a mirror of economics. The theory that rising skirts, lightweight fabrics, sexual provocation and waists swinging high or low is a sign of social and financial abandon was first put forward by the fashion historian James Laver in 1963. Since then, economic cycles have been traced in timelines that set out to prove that cover-up clothes and waists in place mean fiscal penitence after financial excess.
Since the current fashion trends are definitively away from empire waist baby-doll smocks and wisps of dresses toward sense, solemnity and whittled waists, those hedge-fund managers had better note the end of fashion’s bare exposure – and prepare themselves for a bear market.“
Since designers show their seasonal collections far in advance, I could have taken my economic cues for this fall way back in February . . .
