Lean times and hemlines

IT was well after 9pm on Monday, September 15 this year when British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an appearance at the Downing Street reception being hosted by his wife, Sarah, to mark London Fashion Week.

His tardiness surprised no one; after all, Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy that morning. While the fashion editors, retailers and models in the room had gone from a marquee by the Serpentine and Luella Bartley's avant-garde party dresses to Paul Smith's catwalk show at Claridge's on their way to Downing Street, Brown had spent the day dealing with an unfolding financial crisis.

If Brown looked a little tired and distracted as he made a swift circuit of the cashmere-clad, champagne-fuelled crowd and made a quiet exit, it was understandable.

During this autumn's catwalk show season, not even the most determined fashionista could live in a bubble. Crisis segued into catastrophe.

The clothes on the catwalk had been conceived, in large part, during the early summer, when the talk was of whether we were headed for recession or mere downturn. But now, in early autumn, the world's fashion buyers had the unenviable task of committing to chequebook their judgment of what women will want to spend their money on next spring.

The oldest adage about fashion and the economy is that hemlines rise and fall with the stock market. In the boom times of the 20s and the 60s, skirts were short; in the 30s and 40s, they fell. Except that, on closer inspection, even this most famous theory fails to hold water. During the wartime years, arguably the period of greatest privation in modern history, hemlines were shorter than before or after the war; in the recession of the early 90s, hemlines fell.

"Fashion is in the sky, in the street. Fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening," said Coco Chanel. Arguably, the most compelling fashion designers have long been those who engage with the zeitgeist. In early September, Cathy Horyn, the fashion editor of the New York Times, saw a direct link between the tunics layered over trousers at Marc Jacobs' catwalk show and the pop-over aprons of the Depression era.

Weeks later, as investors from London to New York scrambled to buy gold bullion, Miuccia Prada in Milan brought a new meaning to investment dressing by pronouncing that what women really care about 'at a primitive level' is gold, dressing her models in Mad Men-esque skirt suits but in metallic gold linen. The December issue of American Vogue will focus on how to be stylish in a difficult economic climate, with editor Anna Wintour challenging designers to produce credit-crunch-friendly party dresses.

It's clear economic slowdown affects fashion in the most basic way - customers have less cash to spend.

In the 30s, the slowdown in spending was matched by a new down-to-earth attitude. The mannered, boyish silhouette of the 20s was jettisoned; by the early 30s "curves were admitted to exist and allowed to be seen... Fashions were easy, graceful, rather softly shaped, even to the point of limpness," writes Elizabeth Ewing in her History Of 20th Century Fashion. In the 70s and in the early 90s, recession once again appeared to effect a softening of the silhouette, a retreat into nostalgia, after the bold, angular shapes and futuristic aspirations of the 60s and 80s. Jo Hooper, head of womenswear at John Lewis, believes we are experiencing a similar change now. "What we're calling the 'fear factor' is causing a slowdown in what has been a rapidly changing silhouette."

But the relationship between fashion and the economy is not a simple one.

Some observers point to the lure of escapism in straitened eras. After 9/11, upscale New York boutiques reported a surge in demand for lower-heeled shoes: on the shopfloor, they said, women were explaining they wanted shoes they could run in if necessary. The financial crisis has not had the same effect: heel heights have been rising steadily for several years, and look set to continue.

A downbeat stockmarket is not necessarily reflected in downbeat clothes. In many cases, fashion designers appear to have an ability to read the writing on the wall, without waiting for the newspaper headlines. Between 1936 and 1939 fashion began to pick up on the rumble of warmongering, with military-inspired square shoulders teamed with lower heels. At other times, we may misinterpret clothes in retrospect in the light of world events.

Those expecting to find Grapes Of Wrath chic in the stores - dungarees and grubby faces as the hot new look come spring - will be disappointed. Next season's clothes are, if anything, rather more upbeat than those on sale this winter.