The Roaring Twenties were a period of experimentation, boldness, youthfulness at the expense of tradition. Glitz and glamour, paired with underlying simplicity, revitalised post-war fashion, as skirts shortened and silhouettes grew linear. While convenience and rejection of formality were key, beadwork, sequins and embroidery adorned evening-wear. Both waistlines and hemlines mirrored this new sense of audacity, respectively falling and rising throughout the decade. At the dawn of the 20s, the legacy of the First World War weighed on society, having an irreversible effect on culture and fashion; necessity for labour reformed women’s clothing, in turn allowing designers to grow their brands and dictate their taste. Popularised by Coco Chanel, comfort became fashionable, with looser cuts, pockets and androgynous shapes displacing earlier trends in corsets and multiple layers. Women’s sportswear became an acceptable form of casual wear, and tennis in particular inspired fashion through sleeveless, knee-length dresses; thus, collections reflected the influence of optimism and leisure culture, in a decade of economic boom and social change.
Nevertheless, as early as the mid-20s, waistlines began rising again, while hemlines dropped, silhouettes became more modest and comfort reverted to elegant femininity. The Great Depression was close, and its reverberations began to sway boldness towards restraint and controlled creativity. The economic collapse darkened aggregate expectations about the future, inducing a shift towards precaution in fashion and convergence to educated, traditional aesthetics, which looked distant from the earlier decade’s bold expression. Mainstream couture houses as Chanel embraced an anti-modern romantic aesthetic, typified by lace and tulle gowns; such style embodied a more refined, less radical timeless elegance. In contrast to 1920s fashion, the new decade saw feminine, flattering cuts, accentuating waist and hips.
Despite wartime vestiary’s austerity and the utilitarian attires of the 30s and early 40s, post-war economic growth and rising prosperity, coupled with optimistic tendencies in consumer confidence, allowed for a return to luxury. The French couturier Christian Dior revolutionised fashion sense, by rejecting the 20s’ intention to liberate women from restrictive sculptural clothing and embracing instead an image of radical femininity. Tight-fitting jackets, A-line skirts and hyper-feminine, luxurious pieces appealed to the nostalgic mood of post-war society; Dior didn’t envision everyday clothes for pragmatic women of the fast-moving century, but rather a rediscovery of prosperity and the ability to dress extravagantly and deliberately. The stylistic and purposeful difference from the 20s is striking, to the point that even Chanel mockingly highlighted that “Dior doesn’t dress women, he upholsters them!”. Nevertheless, both trends embody the boasting of excess and freedom of expression through clothing, emancipated from restrictive societal norms.
The cyclicality of fashion trends is a universally acclaimed fact, as styles seem to circle back into popularity every two decades; even so, queries regarding its connection to economic changes in the business cycle have for long engaged scholars of both fashion and economics. The correlation seems clear: as the economy contracts, austerity pervades fashion by lengthening skirts, neutralising colours and popularising timeless styles rather than bold, experimental choices; the opposite happens in times of prosperity, when wealth allows for novelty and risk-taking. Perhaps, the most renowned theory connecting recession with apparel is the Hemline index, mistakenly attributed to Wharton economist George Taylor; such an index conceptualises that the changing length of skirts is influenced with imperfect synchronicity by economic activity. For instance, in the 1920s hemlines rose with the stock market, before falling during the Great Recession. They rose again in the 40s post-wartime boom, but Dior’s 1947 launch of long, voluminous skirts seemed to foreshadow the 1949 recession. Finally, as the market righted itself, the 60s youth-driven, rebellious era popularised miniskirts, both provocative and boundary-pushing, which stuck around through the 80s financial expansion until the stock market crashed again in 1987.
In reality, this theory is nothing but a distortion of Taylor’s analysis of post-war growth in the hosiery industry, attributed to several factors including, but not limited to, skirt length. Nevertheless, economists Franses and van Baardwijk at Rotterdam University found truth in this urban legend, statistically proving that the economic cycle leads the hemline length. Claims of causality still remain far-fetched, but the underlying mechanism coordinating movements of fashion and business cycles can be identified with almost full certainty: fashion trends are a cultural response to shifts in consumer confidence and collective sentiment driven by macroeconomic conditions. Whether aggregate expectations about the future are high or low shapes behaviour, since financial security empowers people to spend beyond immediate needs, while risk anticipation causes a shift towards precaution. Consequently, in stability consumers allow themselves expressive, niche, trend-driven items, aware that they may go out of style; in uncertain times, instead, they delay or reduce discretionary consumption to increase savings, thus prioritising timeless, versatile clothes with neutral colours and classic cuts. This elucidates why recessions are often associated with office-wear in fashion. To illustrate, workwear was reconfigured by Stella McCartney with trans-seasonal, foundational staples, emphasising minimalism and reuse of pieces; functionality was favoured, increasing focus on essentials and reducing experimentation.
After the pandemic and its legacy of social unrest and uneven recovery, people desired comfort in older, more conservative habits, as consumers’ financial behaviour tends to be driven by caution. A more discreet expression of wealth then emerged as aesthetic outcome through the so-called quiet luxury, characterised, once again, by neutral palettes, timeless pieces and subtle logos. Economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen defines people as irrational economic agents, who disregard personal utility in pursuit of social status and societal prestige; the post-pandemic emergence of quiet luxury, rather than a retreat from status display, reflects a post-Veblenian reconfiguration of conspicuous consumption into the conveyance of social ranking through subtle, less visible markers. As perceived security lags actual recovery in a context of fragile consumer confidence and visible social inequalities, overt wealth-displays feel socially tone-deaf, shifting consumption towards less ostentatious flaunting that signal status while recoding discretion as a sign of legitimacy.
The complexity of fashion trends’ emergence extends beyond its relation to economic fluctuations through aggregate expectations and risk perception. In reality, dominant classes are essential in instituting the societal symbolic hierarchy, which, according to Pierre Bourdieu, shapes not only taste, but the overall value system of a society; then, the skilfulness of couture houses in grasping and commercialising such aesthetics comes into play. The expression of shifts in collective moods into appearance remains an elusive pattern, suggestive enough to invite interpretation, yet too entangled in social meaning to be read with certainty. Nevertheless, as the newspaper Fort-Worth Star Telegram (1978) stated, not without bitter irony, “If you see a guy in a three-piece suit staring out the window at female legs this autumn, don’t jump to sexist conclusions. Maybe he’s not just a chauvinist pig, after all: he could be diligently seeking clues to the financial future.”
Hi everyone!! I am a student in International Politics and Government and next year I’ll begin my master's degree in Economics and Social Sciences. I’ve always been passionate about writing since it helps me conceptualize my (often disorganized) thoughts into visual form. I love listening to others’ opinions and perspectives, constantly challenging and shaping my own. I am excited to channel this passion into meaningful work!
