Amongst the many things I do not claim to be is a fashion aficionado. If style is your thing then this is probably not the place to be. However, I have been aware since being a teenager that there are some who suggest that the national economic mood can be assessed by the mean skirt length of those who choose to wear them. The shorter the length, the more optimistic the mood is the unsurprising theory.
Sitting in the Eurostar departure area this morning with a sample of hundreds to observe I could not help but notice how much closer to the ankle many hem lengths are when compared to those of recent years. There were exceptions, of course, and I accept the sample is biased. But the portent is not good if the theory holds true.
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Most fashion designers are men. It says more about their need to cover women’s legs than women’s inclination to hide them. Many women will go with fashion, rather than style (the two aren’t necessarily linked…).
Why would men think it’s a good idea to hide women’s legs these days?
How would I know…
I was a mere observer…
Apparently there’s more to it than meets the eye! https://medium.com/upstartcity/hemline-index-actually-works-just-not-the-way-you-thought-127254594716
John D,
Brilliant! I always suspected there was a link with economic ups and downs, now we have research to prove it, ah ah!
I wish this applied to my rather rebellious teenage daughter!
Her and her crew cannot make their school skirts high enough!
The school is on their backs as I write. Detention beckons – despite her her solid subject grades.
As I said, my sample may not be representative
And I think schools completely waste their time on such issues
Isn’t it best that rebellion be based on such innocent things? And yes, hem lengths should be innocent and not sexualised, which is exactly what the schools do by making it an issue
Said as the father of teenagers
Ah – well – a new head master has been appointed!
Need I say more!
And academy status beckons no doubt.
Oh, that’s it
In other interesting correlations for economic mood.
This is the demand for Java developer jobs, in relation to other IT jobs: Look for the ‘Job Vacancy Trend’
https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/java.do
It’s obvious what happens around the financial crisis. Why would java take a nose dive? – I cant find anything that went the other way. Also interesting to note this trend seemed to start 2 years before – mid 2006 – maybe a good long range prediction tool?
Maybe longer for British women and shorter for European women? Analogy to BREXIT?
Go out in Newcastle on a Saturday night – it must be the most optimistic place on the planet.
Having said that, the Geordies are incredibly optimistic people, so maybe there is something in this theory.
🙂
I’ve been
I kno exactly what you are describing
Re Nucassel Big Market of a weekend:
“I know exactly what you are describing”
Makes me feel quite old and quite out of the running (and very properly so at our age) but a cat may look at a king they say, and it stirs pleasant nostalgic feelings of youth. I just wonder why they don’t all have frozen kidneys. Maybe it’s down to the anti freeze they drink. 🙂
Newcastle is the only place I have been where short skirts and short sleeve t-shirts are worn in sub-zero temperatures on a night out so your comments count for something!
Howay the Toon!
Interesting that after WW2 the exact opposite was the case (Dior’s New Look etc.) It all changed in the 60’s with the evolution of the mini skirt, I guess.
The phenomenon attributed in Newcastle is, however, not limited to this city – the same thing happens every weekend in Manchester and Liverpool, to name but two…
I don’t usually pay much attention to this, but having noticed the issue this morning in London I have now noticed hemlines are noticeably higher in Brussels. Does this say soemthing? I actually think it might……
Just that Brussels is still in Summer time, whereas London has moved on to Autumnal mode, all this Brexit business is getting to women’s morale, they just want to hibernate!
Here’s an hypothesis. The innate drive in life to reproduce itself is clearly very strong. Now that human beings have acquired “some” measure of control over it reason can intrude to a greater degree and the ability to have an an adequate long term income to rear a child can become an additional factor of consideration. Since contraception precautions aren’t 100% reliable for a female who do usually perform the primary caregiving role in raising a child encouraging males to take a sexual interest in them has to be tempered by the economic conditions of the society they live in. The Guardian recently ran a feature on “Tighter” and “Looser” societies the tighter ones having more social rules about behaviour because those societies faced more adverse survival conditions. Control over women’s fertility both by women and men would seem to be something human beings create rules over.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/17/science-behind-brexit-vote-trump
I have long given up noticing. I have noticed Abbey Innes at the LSE writing some good stuff though – http://www.lse.ac.uk/european-institute/Assets/Documents/LEQS-Discussion-Papers/LEQSPaper134.pdf
The lack of cloth on my local booze mile may well be down to the escalating costs of public sector management under outsourcing. These costs have risen by 40% over ten years in real terms, just as the Civil Service has been ‘reduced’ by a third. The huge private companies like Atos and G4S pay no tax. I submit Richard may have got this one upside down. Short skirts may be all that’s left after the various privatisation taxes levied on us all in the neo-Soviet Kombinat Thatcher and friends recreated.
Apparently the index is delayed by four years
Ok. So I live way out in the sticks but our barometer is broken because all the females wear trousers. You have to go to Bath or Cheltenham to see a skirt but those places are so wealthy that every girl is carrying half a dozen carrier bags with fashionable logos on. We’re all hoarding food in the village.
An inteesting alternative barometer