Mini Skirts & Lipstick Indicator

[winston]

I think you all have heard about the mini-skirts indicator.

The thinking is that, the length of the skirts or the brightness of the clothings, indicates the amount of risk-taking of that era. The shorter the skirt and the brighter the clothes, the more the risk-taking...

So when I look around, I still see a lot of mini-skirts, bright clothings and big loud logos. So this bull market can go on a few more years ...

Example: Ralph Lauren now has a super big logo instead of the small logo during my days at University.

If you go down to Europe, the logos are now very small and subtle. It's only in the EMs, where you see the nouveau rich flaunting their wealth. Or are those fake goods from the PRC ?

[winston]

The Lindsay Lohan Indicator -- Good News for Bulls By RANDALL W. FORSYTH

In the never-ending quest for economic and stock-market indicators that provide unique insights ahead of mundane measures such as monetary trends or profit forecasts, students of the markets have looked to such unrelated things as magazine covers or women's skirt lengths.

These unconventional indicators, their supporters say, capture the zeitgeist that drives stock prices. For instance, when magazine editors highlight something in a cover story, they are reflecting that trend. If the cover story highlights an economic trend about, say the booming housing market, property prices probably are close to their peak.


Source: Barrons

[winston]

What Skirt Lengths Tell You About The Stock Market By Keith Fitz-Gerald

So what are women's hemlines telling us now?

Let's start with Victoria Beckham.

Formerly known as "Posh" Spice," a reference to her former life in the British girl band, the Spice Girls, she used to wear minis so small that they were rumored to cause heart palpitations during the go-go years of the 1990s. I can't say I disagree.

Lately, though, she's been wearing so-called "pencil" dresses with hems that run well below the knee.

And she's not alone.

Entertainer Beyonce Knowles, model Miranda Kerr and actresses Hayden Panettiere and Eva Mendes are all rocking the look. Even Angelina Jolie is in on the longer hemline action.

I did some checking with fashionistas in London and New York and learned that this is not just in my imagination. At 33 inches, this year's hemlines are, on average, the longest they've been since the Great Depression.

This suggests some very conservative times ahead.


Source: Money Morning

[winston]

Lipstick Index

Estee Lauder chairman Leonard Lauder created the lipstick index during the economic downturn following September 11, 2001.

He noticed that the purchase of cosmetics, lipsticks in particular, tend to be inversely related to the economy because women replace more expensive purchases with small pick-me-ups.

In fall 2001, US lipstick sales increased by 11%. And back during the Great Depression, cosmetics sales overall increased by 25%.

In 2020, at the height of the Covid economic downturn, Estee Lauder’s CEO Fabrizio Freda said that the lipstick index had been replaced by a skincare item as customers donned masks and worked from home.

“The lipstick index has been substituted with the moisturizing index,” said Freda. “But the concept of the index is still there.”

Now we may be seeing that phenomenon rear its head once more. Sephora recently announced a record sales year and data from consumer research group Circana shows that prestige beauty growth has outpaced mass beauty sales, growing 9% and 2%, respectively in the first quarter of the year.

Of course, the so-called lipstick index is a less technical — and more fun — measure of economic downturn and isn’t always entirely accurate. But as the free-spending post-pandemic party comes to an end in the US, it’s something worth exploring.

Source: CNN