Sunday, September 13, 2009

Fashion and the stockmarket

There has been serious research on the connection between what people wear and the state of the economy. I forget who, but a successful investment manager used to look at all sorts of apparently unconnected phenomena, including fashion, to get a clue as to what was really happening and about to happen.




PS: My wife says 80s-style shoulder pads are coming back in the Autumn catalogues. A bullish sign?

5 comments:

James Higham said...

An optimistic sign, more like.

hatfield girl said...

I'm wearing a linen dress with lots of sewn, narrow pleats running from the rounded neckline to the beginning of the skirt which is then left unsewn to flare out into fullness. Below the knee, and with short sleeves, also part of the width of the unpleated material. The pleats shape the whole thing. A sort of shepherd's smock in pale lilac.

There's a lot of this about - using cut, and intricate pleating and seaming to shape natural materials, and much less tight, stretch-fabric-obtained fitting. Once the stretchy technological fabrics fall from fashion there are going to be very marked differences in the way people can dress. We'll be going back to having a good pair of shoes and a good handbag, with a tailored suit and a couple of frocks and changing our clothes when indoors for their preservation.

There are house dresses here, in very traditional patterns, in the Saturday markets, (black with tiny printed flowers, brown with swirly patterns, grey with geometric over printed designs etc) and I noticed the small HGs buying them in Large (and Large is quite a size) and wearing them hitched up over pretty belts; much nicer than trackies but easy to wear at home and chuck in the machine. And they cost around 10 euros.

I like small shoulder pads, they hide a multitude of deportment sins when slumping at the end of a long day. And if you cut them out (or they are removable) you get a lovely dropped shoulder line.

Sorry, I'll go back and maunder about all this on my own.

Sackerson said...

I think my wife will keenly appreciate your sartorial descriptions, HG; I'd need a photo.

Sackerson said...

James - the wisdom of crowds?

James Higham said...

Shan't be drawn on that one.