the.com/hemline
The economy's hidden yardstick: skirts rise with confidence, fall with doubt.
means The lower edge of a skirt or dress, and its height from season to season.
from A simple compound of 'hem' — the finished edge of cloth, from Old English 'hem' meaning border or edge — plus 'line,' marking where that edge falls. The economic folklore attached to it (that hemlines rise in boom times and drop in downturns) is a 20th-century idea, popularly tied to an economist's musings, but it's an observation about fashion layered onto the word, not where the word itself comes from.
- the theory
- shorter hemlines allegedly predict bull markets
- coined by
- economist George Taylor in 1926
- the catch
- correlation, not causation, despite the folklore
- fashion logic
- fabric rationing in recessions also shortens skirts