These "fashion trends follow the economy" notions (heels, skirt length, beards) feels like a really good example of "correlation is not causation". Thanks for doing this little dive!
I was just about to post exactly the same thing! Hammered in to us as undergraduate scientists when it came to doing statistical analysis of data. In this case there's not even much of a correlation, so jumping to causation feels like one almighty stretch!
Definitely. Economies go up and down. You have a fashion, then a backlash, then it comes back again. Sometimes this ebbing and flowing may happen to line up with the economy.
I had to laugh because when she talked about what women were wearing right now/around the house I was like, "nothing at the moment, but usually crocs or my chacos around the house."
What weirds me out about this theory in the first place is the Great Depression reference. High heels were neither affordable, nor practical. But can we acknowledge how mindblowingly gorgeous the shoes from 20s and 30s were?
@@tayet6875 The company that Nicole designs shoes for, American Duchess, makes historical and vintage inspired shoes from the 18th century through the 1940s and are really nice, good quality, and are a good range of sizes. I have such a hard time finding comfortable womens shoes because I have wide feet and am size 10/11 so I was hesitant about ordering online but my pair of American Duchess shoes fit so well. There's this one pair of green 1930s shoes that are sold out right now that I'm absolutely in love with that I really hope they decide to make another run of at some point.
theres also a danish brand called Memery who do shoes inspired by the first half of the 20th century. Theres a bunch of cute designs on their website but I don’t know how historically accurate they are
I absolutely LOVE this. I also love the emergence (in my youtube circles at least) of "Academically Salty About Something" videos as a genre. I know these kinds of videos are hard, since you're basically presenting us with a research paper, but thank you so much for doing it.
just realized "academically salty" describes my youtube subscriptions AND my twitter follows... the podcasts I'm subscribed to, too, now that I think about it...
YES! Nicole, Cheyney (Not Yo Momma's History), Abby Cox, Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, and Bernadette Banner are all EXCELLENT at this!! In the not-history realm, Lindsey Ellis (ESPECIALLY the Omegaverse two), Ask a Mortician, and NativLang are some of my other faves. Who am I missing?
In the 1980s in the UK, shoes tended to be completely flat. The sole reason (see what I did there) was Princess Diana, who was 5ft 10inches and didn’t want to appear taller than her husband.
I’ve always liked learning about changing silhouettes in historical fashion, but one thing I never heard about until a few years ago and often still forget is how styles change due to innovations in clothing technology - materials, closures, production techniques... Gosh, I love learning more about these interconnections
Two interesting but distressing examples of this intersection between technology, socioeconomic trends & fashion changes are how the use of slavery in the USA directly influenced the widespread use of cotton as a fashion fabric, and the popularity of sprigged cotton muslin when it became very cheap due to Britain's colonial exploitation of India. I really appreciate the way that Nicole always includes the sociological and social justice impacts & drivers of fashion in her videos, it provides so much valuable context? (Her Gonzo hat episode was an excellent example!)
I watched this video two days ago. This morning I cited it to the editor of a major newspaper when one of its fashion columnists stated the myth as fact in her column.
Speaking as a college economics instructor- this is an A+ report! I would comment that you have done an excellent job with your critical thinking skills. I wish I had a classroom full of Nicole’s! 🤗
I wish there were more kitten heels available currently. It's impossible to find shoes in a nice style with a low heel. It's either you break your neck or you wear flats.
I wish wedges were always available. I have difficult feet so heels are not very me-friendly, but I can do a sprint on wedges and a lass sometimes just wants a heel under her pretty clothes.
whoever came up with this theory missed "correlation =/= causation" day in school. *sigh* Thanks for making this video! I loved that you also brought up the difference between high fashion, formal fashion, and every day fashion.
During my lengthy history on this planet, I have seen heel heights rise and fall to, in my opinion, encourage the buying of new trends. Year to year, adjustments are made to be able to sell to the consumer a "new look" in footwear.
I mean, I'd be more willing to accept the argument that a better economy leads to lower heels, with more women being in work and therefore needing practical shoes, but even so it'd be a contributing factor at best.
Correlation is not causation. I remember hearing that purple is only in fashion during economic downturns. It's social anxiety about the future getting compressed into tropes that claim to read the coming economic trends. Like a fortune cookie. Without the fun of a cookie. For our '97 wedding the shortest heels I could find were 3 1/2" tall. I'm proud to say I got through the ceremony and the night without dying. - Cathy (&, accidently, Steve), Ottawa/Bytown
What really irritated me when the super tall stiletto heels came out that the heels were the same height, whether they were a size 6 or a size 10. As a size 6, the degree of arch made it impossible for my feet to bend that far and still walk. Now I might wear a moderate wedge, but that’s it. I’m at the age that I want comfy feet!
I strongly agree with your opinion. In my art history classes, one of the comments my teachers used to drop was the fact that "movements are not made form one day to the other nor become dominant rightaway", just like art, economics and fashions are the result of maaaaaany cultural and social factors that are hard to identify unless there is a year to year documented archive to make comparisons 🙈 I saw that video essay I was like: ok, but where is the historical factor? Women did not wore high heels the same way they do now 🙃 I was so confused XD thank goodness you talked about the topic and clear most of my doubts!
Thank you for debunking this! Based on my own memories of the latter part of the 20th century, I’ve always thought this theory was off. I LOVED all the references of catalogs and museum pieces you referenced!! I’m a bit of a shoe fanatic. I had surgery on both of my feet: The left in ‘85, the right in ‘93. As a result, the highest heel I could wear was 3”, and only briefly. The early ‘00s were brutal! That’s roughly when I quit caring about modern shoe fashion, and began a love affair with weird, unique, and/or vintage footwear. Really loved this one!!
I'm 56, and had never heard that heel height was dependent on the economy. However, I had heard that we bought redder lipstick when times were bad. I have no evidence for this, and I know our esteemed hostess doesn't 'do' makeup, but I would love to know the stats on lippy.
The argument I’ve heard for lipstick is that it’s a small, fairly affordable luxury, which makes it preferable to other luxury products in leaner times.
@@marchgregoroff4605 Safiya Nygaard is the proper spelling. This is definitely true for American women during WWII, red lipstick was seen as patriotic and a way for women to show their support for the war effort. I believe there was also a campaign that told American women that Hitler hated red lipstick 😂
Never heard the High Heel Recession Theory before - though my professor in university in the early 2000s put forward the Skirt Hemline Recession Theory that was very similar. I also recall the early 2000s high heel horror - where there were ballet flats or five inch spikes, and NOTHING in between. The early 2000s were a bleak time for womens' fashion.
This video makes my data nerd heart so happy. Pop sci studies are awful, they undermine actual scholarly work and erode public trust of research and analysis. Thanks for applying your expertise to this one!
In the 90's, I heard the same theory, but referencing skirt length. I vaguely remember an Economics professor scoffing at it, and looking for the real data.
I would think skirt length is more closer tied to sociopolitical climates than economy, specifically correlated to each wave of the feminist movement. But that's just my theory, I'm not too interested in doing any specific research in that area
@@Butterflier00 20s was a tad bit shorter but 30s definitely got a bit longer and then 40s got a bit shorter because of rationing. 50s skirts could be long or short and got fuller and then skirts slimmed down then shortened a lot in the 60s.
Very interesting! I'm about halfway through the video but I also wanted to mention that correlation doesn't equal causation and trends come around about every 20 years anyway. So just because the trend is toward higher heels doesn't mean the economy has anything to do with it. What if we point to presidential elections and say when a conservative is an office heels are lower and when a Democrats in office heals are higher? What if I said that and then claimed the heel height was due to whether conservativeism or liberalism was the most popular at the time. There's probably just as much evidence for my random theory I just now made up as there is for the heel height economy theory xD thank you so much for your hard work and effort in making these videos
This was a really interesting video. I did a similar study when in college, on the relationship between women's skirt hem lengths and widths and the economy, during part of the same time period that you discuss (I only used 1850-1950). I also theorized that longer and fuller skirts embody both luxury (amount of fabric), nostalgia (similarity to styles of the past), and conservatism (cover up more of the body), which appeal to people when they are not doing well economically. I found that this theory tracked fairly well between 1880 and 1940 but not so much during the other decades.
I would suggest that one reason that we went back to kitten heels in the early 1980s was that Princess Diana favored that height. As someone who was in my early 20s at this time, I definitely noticed that the increase in fashionable low heel shoes mirrored what Diana was wearing just after she married Prince Charles. Love your videos, both educational and entertaining!
I was one of those people wearing combat boots in the 90s. And I’m glad for that- it was a very comfortable time in my style evolution. I tended to wear my docs with those floaty, floral, buttoned up dresses. Very Drew Barrymore in the mid 90s. I’d also wear my Chucks with dresses. It was a whole thing. A very comfortable thing, certainly more comfy than the ridiculously high platform heels I was wearing a decade later. But now I wear either flats or AD shoes, and I’m back to being comfy again.
I seem to have bought my weirdest/highest shoes when I myself was in a depression 🤣, regardless of the economy. This was a great analytical breakdown 👍🏻
Thank you very much for that detailed response to the video. It really shows how difficult it can be to make broad generalization over history. You and other people in the comment have pointed out a series of methodological flaws: sampling problems, cherry-picking, overgeneralization, confusion between correlation and causation. But even if those methodological flaws were corrected, I'm not even sure that a well constructed study showing us a correlation between recessions and high heels would be on its own very helpful to understand fashion. Economy is only one among several factors that can influence fashion, and shoes are only a part of a general fashionable silhouette. I'm not sure that a study on these two elements taken in isolation would teach us very much about the real world.
as a history nerd that did only basic art history at a pre-university level: same. it really shouldn't take a historian to understand that history is human and therefore, rather complex.
I was in elementary school during the early 2000s and wore a woman's size 6 by first grade... going shoe shopping for "dress shoes" was a time! We couldn't find hardly any flats in the woman's section and none of the children's shoes fit, so we would go through at least three shoe stores to find a pair of (usually ugly) flats so my mom wouldn't be forced to send her six year old to church in 4 inch stilettos!
I love this, such an interesting and informative way of debunking a very simplistic "myth". :) Also, kudos on the subtle music changes in the background to que the different periods. 👌🎶
My heels went down as my patience for them did. I'm 5'1" so I'm STILL gonna be short with heels on anyway, so...why not _not_ torture my feet all day/risk snapping an ankle?
Same. Back in my 20’s I would wear 4” stilettos. Now at nearly 40, I wear my comfortable Rockport wedges on occasion, but more of than not, if I consider wearing heels (2” extra comfy pumps by Clark’s), I’ll try them on, then I’m like “nope” and put on flats.
Oh my god, the struggle to find sensible heels in the 00s was real!! I remember my school shoes couldn't be trainers for uniform reasons so one year I ended up having to wear fairly high heels all winter, walking over rough ground with a heavy bag! I had 50-year-old knees at 14 thanks to that trend!
Honestly, if you overlaid avg heel height and the economic fluctuations on a graph, they are NOT going to match up - there might be a little bit more correlation if you compared heel height to # of women in the workforce, as that would drive shoe decisions much more than "the economy". Amazing video, Nicole!
Something that's not included in the studies, including this one, is the time it takes to design, source materials, manufacture, and ship shoes. Design trends can develop years before they actually hit the stores. I mean, we don't expect American Duchess to see an economic trend, say "Must make higher heels!!" and have shoes available on the site within 6 months.
Actually that’s about the turn around! The shoes that are coming out now were designed and sent off to start in November. If it weren’t for holidays slowing things down (China has a long holiday in Jan/Feb) the shoes would usually be 6 months design to on site. And that’s a small company!
Interesting video, me and my friend were discussing what shoe styles would become more popular now that working from home is socially acceptable whether comfier styles come in because people don't need to show off or whether they go wilder because they are free of dress codes.
Could some increases in heel heights be because of structural reasons? Could it be that people figured out how to make higher heels because they they figured how to make it work. Or had materials that they didn't have in the past to be able to make taller heels work?
The amount of research that went just this video is astounding to think about. I mean I've kinda thought of this topic as a sort of Shower thought experiment, but I'm glad you did this video and basically answered this question for us, me specifically.
i love how nuanced life is. this is very interesting. i avoided the video in question cuz i’m wary of larger creators when it comes to history, but i’m excited to see this
You’re in for a good time on cos-tube! The beautiful thing is that Nicole isn’t the only one doing this fascinating kind of video. Cos-tube has some seriously academically motivated researchers presenting on topics they’re passionate about.
as an art student/nerd, i've always had my suspicions about that channel. however, i've never learnt anything about fashion history and thus couldn't ever place a finger on where they went wrong. thanks for this, very educational
Yes!!! Especially when you get to the 90's! I had the same reaction as you because I also remember the 90's as well as the high heels of the 2000's. But, I will admit I was total trash for the platforms tennis shoes and flip flops. 😂
Your research and knowledge is impeccable. For me it highlights, as do several of the comments, the need for what is generally the mid-heel, everyday walking shoes. I'm so tired of the only current choice being over 2 inches or flats. Any wonder I'm enthralled by the 20s/30s shoes. Bring them back, I say!
I would think that heel height trends have more to do with hem length trends than anything else. Some heel hights just look better with certain lengths of skirts. I also was in college in the early 2000s. I remember conducting walking tours for student housing in 5" platform heels. The expressions on whining 18 year old faces about tired feet when they were wearing sneakers and their mothers pointed out my foot wear was hysterical.
Just hearing you explain the study already made me realise that this was a hypothesis and they looked for evidence, rather than formulating a hypothesis on the data
The only shoe fashion change I can recall from my 1990's is the addition of high tops to the range of sneakers because 80% of us wore sneakers absolutely everywhere. 😉
Platform sneakers were huge in my neck of the woods in the 90s and Doc Martens too. So it was more thick, chunky. Nobody I knew was into ultra high heels even though Manolo references were all over the place because of Sex in the City. Not that platforms are better to walk in than high heels. I turned my ankle more than once :/
True. I was a teen in the 90s and most girls would wear jeans (Levis 501 were the most popular brand/model) and Converse or Doc Martens. For the boys it was mostly skater shoes and baggy, low worn jeans. I was one of the few girls, who would 'dress up' and wear heals and make up and stuff. Which is kinda funny, because my style later became increasingly casual - my clothes today would be more appropriate for a school girl, then what I wore back then 😆
I can support your view of the 60s and 70s. One inch sling back shoes for most of the time with the occasional flat gogo boot. Evening could be a bit higher but us working and middle class people didn't do fancy galas and disco dancing wasn't as easy in heels later on. In the late 90s I discovered Birkenstocks! After that shoes became about the function of walking as the body aged and became fussy.
Wonderful video! Just wanted to point out one thing I noticed as a science teacher. You called this a theory, which colloquially is how we use the word. But in the scientific sense, this would be a hypothesis, something that relates two or more variables and can be tested. A theory ties together multiple lines of evidence(measurable facts), hypotheses, and laws (mathematical relationships that allow us to make predictions). Thanks for the well researched video!
This is probably because I was in private school, but I only wore flats and 1-2 inch heels in the early 2000s The same goes for the other girls I knew This could also be a difference between women's shoes and girls shoes
I think the heel goes up when the economy is up because that's when we don't need the practicality of a low or nonexistent heel and can be more eccentric with our fashion, and the heel goes down when we need to be more practical for work
Thank you for making this! I was so curious when I first started seeing this statement, and I was like "this needs more research." Nicole to the rescue!!!
What do I wear right now? Socks..What do I usually wear? 1920s inspired mens shoes/boots; because I can't be arsed to wear high heels in the office, and the boots are so much more comfy.
Nichole! you are spot on in this vid. I'm born in 1943 and have seen the crazy directions shoes and fashions have gone in the past years. There is nothing to do with recession or wealth. I postulate that the real difference is caused by engineering. Heels got higher and thinner because we had stronger materials and better glues. Add that to the idea that the next generation wants always to outdo the last, and you have wild designs and construction that make drastic design changes possible and desirable.
And this is why I watch people like you and not the trendy type of video that just do half the research and just use what matches the conclusion they want.
I was totally waiting for this LOL. It would be worth summarizing that what is represented in fashion or in how we would like to be perceived during downturns in the economy is that we would still like to appear as though we are not struggling, which may contribute to the rise of heel height as presented socially in high fashion or high optic settings. Ergo, dressing to the nines when you go out to a nice event, but actually renting the runway and eating ramen at home
Many years ago a fashion journalist pointed out that platform shoes (and, I would argue, extreme fashion in general) come into fashion roughly every 20 years. She said that it’s because no one is going to go through the ankle twisting awfulness of high platform shoes twice.
It sorta seems from the data that heel heights went up and styles started to vary more as women started getting more economic power and social liberties. Especially once women enter the work force in the 40s and again in the late 60s/70s you start seeing the really tall/wild shoes break out. Maybe because we could now buy a pair of “comfy work shoes” and “going out shoes” vs. one pair of utilitarian, everyday shoes you see in more “domestic” eras? This video gave me so much to think about, love it!
I found that an excellent, well researched and well argued video essay. I always thought that theory a bit of a correlation rather than causation, but now it is clear it was "research" to support an argument that was inherently flawed as opposed to collecting data and extrapolating a conclusion. Thank you.
Hi, I have for a few years trained ballroom (a much more fun type of exercise than a treadmill or a jog around the neighborhood). For my training and competition I wear the traditional 1920's heeled shoe. 2" flared heal with a round toe in satin. I personally love those blue and gold 24-RSM 's and would gladly get a new gown to go with them. For reference, a new gown done "right" with all the Swarovski bits and all, costs about $ 1800 US or € 2000, give or take. New competition shoes cost $ 90-100 US, € 100-120 or at least did when I bought my new shoes in December 2019, and those look very much like the 25-RSM shoe. The ladies who are also doing Latin (I only train Standard), they wear something looking very much like a 50's heeled sandal, with a 3" (or rather the highest they can wear and still reach down to the floor) stiletto, looking like a flared cuban heel. The gent's don't come of shot free either. In Standard they wear a low heeled patent leather shoe, but when there is Latin on the menu, they wear a 1" to 1.5" cuban or higher (depending on the hight of the lady) heeled foot glove. Your historical shoes lives on in a very tangible way in dance studios and dance competitions all over the world, and they are still very pretty. Yours, Ann
I shall also add what I learned from being a child of the 80s: *heel height was then a show of power.* In the business world (and here I also include teachers, even of elementary school), the more authority a woman had, the higher her heels tended to be. For one personal example I contrast the costume of our school's female principal with the almost non-existent heels often worn by our young blonde Grade 6&8 teacher (usually with shorter-but-still-knee-length exceptionally-tight skirts; the principal by this time was male again and had taken quite a fancy to her). I shall also note that *end of decade fashion tends to be a product of the cresendo'ing sensibilities of the past decade, rather than the shape of the decade to come.* It generally takes a couple of years for a new decade to distinguish itself.
you deserve sooo many more followers, you are one of the few sewing channels (also shoes, but i'm a tailor, pattern maker and designer;)) i get proper, extensive information from, and not just the basic knowledge! you're so talented and informed and it is a delight to learn from you
Classic correlation does not indicate causation case! Thanks for this analysis. Fun to watch! More in play is the technology that makes heel height possible. I remember that period of time where you could only find 4 inch heels at Dillard’s. I ended up with a closet full of shoes I couldn’t wear but hung onto for years cuz I felt guilty and because I found them pretty.
As a sociologist versed in statistics I would rather hypothesise that we simply have an overlap of fashion and business cycles. They are not related (or not much), but they run parallel so it is only natural that they will conjunct from time to time. If anythink, I'd say that the lipstick effect has more sound theoretical assumptions (although no compelling empirical evidence beside a few anecdotal cases, as far as I know).
This is super interesting. I don't mind essay video at all because I don't have the concentration required to do this work myself 😌 I would just like to point that when a video is focused on measurements it would be very appreciated to have the conversion in international measurements written on the screen ^-^
I agree with this video completely. I was in college during the "Grunge" era and didn't see to much of it outside social arena except for majors like forestry (my major) Agronomy, Vet med, etc where flannel shirts against the cold and sturdy boots were a must. It was the early 2000's before I was brave enough and fashion allowed really high heals but I do remember an elderly lady commenting to me on a pair of fetching peep toes I bought that she remembered owning a pair in the 40's and wear them while you still can. LOL!
What I have found, just from observing people around me, is that it seems more like the chunkiness of the heel changes more than the height. When people don't feel hopeful, it seems like they wear bigger, clunkier, chunkier shoes. this is what I have noticed anecdotally in my life
This theory sounds like a fantasy, nothing to do with everyday reality. Bad economy means less income. That means less money for fashion, making do with what you have instead of replacing it. Also, it often means people trying to work more (often menial) jobs, calling for more practical (lower) shoes.
I absolutely agree with you, and the same argument has been made for years about hem length of skirts. Le sigh. And I went the combat boot route starting in the advent of the Grunge era, as all 5'11" in bare feet of me was not going the stiletto heel way... can you imagine how many concussions from forgetting to duck through doorways there would have been? The clumsiness was bad enough from reaching that full height at age 13... but I digress. I think the early 2000's were a lot of fun for dress shoes, as there was a resurgence (at least in my area) of the modern Victorian walking boots with a more moderate heel, and they were super cute!
Yet another problem of correlation does not equal causation. There are other explanations for each of the changes. Thank you for your video and research!
Thank you for making this video! I watched the other video and was a bit skeptical, but I'm not knowledgeable enough on shoe (or recession) history to tell what exactly sounded weird. Your explanation was very thorough and informative, just how I like it! 🥰
I always learn so much in your videos!! I'm super curious if we'll see an upturn in sales of high heels and business wear once we really exit pandemic-fashion and work-from-home pjs/loungewear.
I wish I could give multiple likes 🥰. This video was great with the analysis and the visuals/music 👍🏾. Personally, the subject of heel hight has always been an issue because I apparently have larger-than-average feet for a female 🤦🏽♀️. I had seen that video pop up recently and decided not to watch it because of the other similar comparisons to economy and fashion. I'm glad you watched it for us and gave a wonderful analysis.
This video is such tea, i love niche, well-researched arguments. I would say that the common heel height going down, if it is related to economic success, has more to do with time periods that were feeling the benefits from large waves of women entering the workforce? Heel heights for common daywear heels went stayed constant around 1-2 inches during the Great Depression, and even decreased to that height again in the late 1950s when, again, more women entered the workforce, and stayed low in the early 60s as the economy was generally feeling the effects of a stronger/bigger workforce. They stayed at that practical height for most daywear in the 70s as shown by Nicole, despite the fashion heels that are the symbol of the era. That collective idea of heel height goes down in the 80s as lower shoes become more common again, during a time where there is a large wave of women entering the economy, and stays low in the 90s during the effects of that change. This, plus the general trend that ideas in fashion are evolved until they become more extreme over time. Like in the 1970s, fashionable heel heights naturally grew to the iconically high platform level for the first time because, after decades of experimentation with heels, the world at large was finally ready to accept such an extreme version of heels into the collective culture. Each time in the 20th century that heels shrunk down, eventually people got more daring and extreme in the style again as fashion became more experimental for a variety of reasons (including, potentially, the economy and fantasy/escapism, women entering the workforce, general fashion experimentation, but not solely for those reasons). All of this is conjecture, btw. Pls don't take what I say as facts, I'm just putting some thoughts out there in response to a good video :)
The Spiders Georg Historian videos always make me giggle. Also - that bit about you thinking about your mother's footwear reminded me of "Ah, ya muddah wears combat boots!" Which, to be honest, yeah - my mama's favorite hiking boots when we were in Girl Scouts were Army Surplus. Functional, but not fashionable. That didn't stop her from wearing them to PTA meetings. 😀
OMG!! I had those exact white perforated leather clogs from the Sears catalog. My best friend had navy clogs. We were the first to wear them in our high school...one of the only times in my life that I was "fashion-forward."
It’s been said that hemlines are also an indicator of the economy. As you so eloquently explored heel heights as economic indicators, I’d be interested in your findings on how long or short our skirts are. Heck, I just enjoy your voice and look forward to Sunday when I can listen to whatever you have to tell us.
I definitely want to debunk the hemline/economy concept too! It always forgets to acknowledge the rising hemlines of the 1910s and the economic recessions.
Especially looking at some of the examples you showed it seems to me that it's more cultural politics/counter culture movements and or social change (which may in some instances also be influenced by the economy and global events) that drive changes in fashion in general and thus also in heel heights. I saw the original video you reacted to recommended to me and immediately thought Well thats bs, so I was glad someone debunked it.
Thanks for your research and report! Can't believe anyone at IBM--or any company!--thought spending time on such a less-than half-baked theory was worthwhile.
I have never heard of this theory, but it was fascinating to look at nonetheless. Another thing you might want to consider as far as heel height is region. If you ask the average woman in Arizona what her go to shoe is she would probably tell you flip flops or sandals. While a woman in Alaska might tell you boots. I remember in the 90' wearing sneakers or western boots when it was cold and sandals when it was warm. Any other time I was bearfoot. That is still pretty much the norm for me. I was never really one for shoes. I remember in the 80's up my mom wearing heels to the office and an any formal occasions up until the economy tanked and she lost her job. By the time she returned to the workplace in '95 she was allowed a more casual dress code and typically wore sneakers to the office.
What I'm curious about based on a Margaret Atwood excerpt on lipstick is whether or not cheaper high heels are sold at a greater frequency during recessions, or if more expensive high heels are sold less frequently (like a great bargain of five for 30 vs a long lasting good quality heel for 30).
I think the 20th Century was a laboratory for designs of all kinds of things. And I hope that now that we have global marketplaces, all designs will be available all the time. People have decided what cuts and rises of jeans they like, the same with bras and briefs. Some people like to be dressed up in sequins, others love to dress up in tie-dyed hippie dresses. Do whatever you want with your hair length, cut, texture and color. It's a big world, and people can choose all kinds of stuff. The world economy runs of consumption, which is kind of bad for the planet. But the more we buy only what we really like and need, maybe things will not be so wasteful. I own no spike heels or sequins, but I'm glad you can have them if that's what you want.
These "fashion trends follow the economy" notions (heels, skirt length, beards) feels like a really good example of "correlation is not causation". Thanks for doing this little dive!
Yeah, I was watching this thinking "this sounds like a perfect example of people not understanding that correlation does not equal causation.
Agreed, I was thinking about the hem lengths conjecture and the economy. The economy goes down and so do the skirt lengths.
I was just about to post exactly the same thing! Hammered in to us as undergraduate scientists when it came to doing statistical analysis of data. In this case there's not even much of a correlation, so jumping to causation feels like one almighty stretch!
There's also the "lipstick index"... which is very literally used as a marketing tactic to investors!
Definitely. Economies go up and down. You have a fashion, then a backlash, then it comes back again. Sometimes this ebbing and flowing may happen to line up with the economy.
1. We love a data literacy moment. Correlation does not equal causation.
2. I love that I got an ad for Crocs for the midroll.
I had to laugh because when she talked about what women were wearing right now/around the house I was like, "nothing at the moment, but usually crocs or my chacos around the house."
I'm sad that I did not get a crocs ad. I did get a Vans add though!
I got an easy listening radio/streaming and a "car milk" ad. I think the algorithm is confused by my search history and subscription list.
What on earth is "car milk" and what what are you watching to be the target demo? Lol
I got an ad for YSL shoes 😅 Like, I do love a heel, but idk how the algorithm thinks I'm in that economic bracket! lol
Quick reference comment for everyone else struggling to visualise inches:
1 in = 2.54 cm
2 in = 5.08 cm
3 in = 7.62 cm
4 in = 10.16 cm
5 in = 12.70 cm
you're a legend! thanks!!
I always picture an inch as being approxiamately the length from the tip of my thumb to the knuckle.
Thanks :)
Thank you!
I was lucky enough to have a tape measure right next to me (I'm knitting!) so I could look at the inch measurement and go "ohhh"
What weirds me out about this theory in the first place is the Great Depression reference. High heels were neither affordable, nor practical.
But can we acknowledge how mindblowingly gorgeous the shoes from 20s and 30s were?
Yes! I have been searching for shoes of that heel hight and shape! I think they are very flattering and were beautifully designed
@@tayet6875 The company that Nicole designs shoes for, American Duchess, makes historical and vintage inspired shoes from the 18th century through the 1940s and are really nice, good quality, and are a good range of sizes.
I have such a hard time finding comfortable womens shoes because I have wide feet and am size 10/11 so I was hesitant about ordering online but my pair of American Duchess shoes fit so well. There's this one pair of green 1930s shoes that are sold out right now that I'm absolutely in love with that I really hope they decide to make another run of at some point.
@@chasewighton4064 but the shapes aren't like the ones shown here, rounded edges abd tips. their designs are more angular
theres also a danish brand called Memery who do shoes inspired by the first half of the 20th century. Theres a bunch of cute designs on their website but I don’t know how historically accurate they are
I absolutely LOVE this. I also love the emergence (in my youtube circles at least) of "Academically Salty About Something" videos as a genre. I know these kinds of videos are hard, since you're basically presenting us with a research paper, but thank you so much for doing it.
Academically salty is going in my memory and I will use it as much as I can.
I love the "academically salty" genre of video.
YESSSS. These are like one of my fav things on the internet.
just realized "academically salty" describes my youtube subscriptions AND my twitter follows... the podcasts I'm subscribed to, too, now that I think about it...
YES! Nicole, Cheyney (Not Yo Momma's History), Abby Cox, Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, and Bernadette Banner are all EXCELLENT at this!! In the not-history realm, Lindsey Ellis (ESPECIALLY the Omegaverse two), Ask a Mortician, and NativLang are some of my other faves. Who am I missing?
love learning more about this from someone who definitely has more knowledge on the subject than i do! really great and informative video 💕
Yay for learning :D
i loved your video on this topic! i actually just came from it
From the perspective of a historian, your video was not good.
You used zero critical thinking skills or data literacy.
Perpetuating pop historical myths to get clicks. Perfect reason for educated people to stay away from your channel.
In the 1980s in the UK, shoes tended to be completely flat. The sole reason (see what I did there) was Princess Diana, who was 5ft 10inches and didn’t want to appear taller than her husband.
Reminded me of Lizzie from Black Butler
Same reason I stopped wearing heals. My husband is only 1” taller than me without shoes.
I’ve always liked learning about changing silhouettes in historical fashion, but one thing I never heard about until a few years ago and often still forget is how styles change due to innovations in clothing technology - materials, closures, production techniques... Gosh, I love learning more about these interconnections
Two interesting but distressing examples of this intersection between technology, socioeconomic trends & fashion changes are how the use of slavery in the USA directly influenced the widespread use of cotton as a fashion fabric, and the popularity of sprigged cotton muslin when it became very cheap due to Britain's colonial exploitation of India.
I really appreciate the way that Nicole always includes the sociological and social justice impacts & drivers of fashion in her videos, it provides so much valuable context? (Her Gonzo hat episode was an excellent example!)
I watched this video two days ago. This morning I cited it to the editor of a major newspaper when one of its fashion columnists stated the myth as fact in her column.
Speaking as a college economics instructor- this is an A+ report! I would comment that you have done an excellent job with your critical thinking skills. I wish I had a classroom full of Nicole’s! 🤗
High praise! 👍🏻
I wish there were more kitten heels available currently. It's impossible to find shoes in a nice style with a low heel. It's either you break your neck or you wear flats.
As a U.S. citizen, I have to look overseas (online) for classy shoes with short heels, unless I want to the kind of shoes I wore private school
A lot of alternative fashion styles have more variety in heel height.
I wish wedges were always available. I have difficult feet so heels are not very me-friendly, but I can do a sprint on wedges and a lass sometimes just wants a heel under her pretty clothes.
I found some nice ones in stores originally from east Asia
I just want comfy heels that don't make my back hurt to the point of tears.
whoever came up with this theory missed "correlation =/= causation" day in school. *sigh* Thanks for making this video! I loved that you also brought up the difference between high fashion, formal fashion, and every day fashion.
During my lengthy history on this planet, I have seen heel heights rise and fall to, in my opinion, encourage the buying of new trends. Year to year, adjustments are made to be able to sell to the consumer a "new look" in footwear.
That is definetely a more probable relation between economy and heel heights 😅
100%👏
Yep! And styles of jeans, colours, hem heights etc etc.... everything cycles
And you can find everything from flats to sky-high at the store - and have been able to since I've been a teen in the late 90s.
I mean, I'd be more willing to accept the argument that a better economy leads to lower heels, with more women being in work and therefore needing practical shoes, but even so it'd be a contributing factor at best.
Correlation is not causation. I remember hearing that purple is only in fashion during economic downturns. It's social anxiety about the future getting compressed into tropes that claim to read the coming economic trends. Like a fortune cookie. Without the fun of a cookie.
For our '97 wedding the shortest heels I could find were 3 1/2" tall. I'm proud to say I got through the ceremony and the night without dying.
- Cathy (&, accidently, Steve), Ottawa/Bytown
What really irritated me when the super tall stiletto heels came out that the heels were the same height, whether they were a size 6 or a size 10. As a size 6, the degree of arch made it impossible for my feet to bend that far and still walk. Now I might wear a moderate wedge, but that’s it. I’m at the age that I want comfy feet!
I strongly agree with your opinion. In my art history classes, one of the comments my teachers used to drop was the fact that "movements are not made form one day to the other nor become dominant rightaway", just like art, economics and fashions are the result of maaaaaany cultural and social factors that are hard to identify unless there is a year to year documented archive to make comparisons 🙈 I saw that video essay I was like: ok, but where is the historical factor? Women did not wore high heels the same way they do now 🙃 I was so confused XD thank goodness you talked about the topic and clear most of my doubts!
Thank you for debunking this! Based on my own memories of the latter part of the 20th century, I’ve always thought this theory was off. I LOVED all the references of catalogs and museum pieces you referenced!! I’m a bit of a shoe fanatic. I had surgery on both of my feet: The left in ‘85, the right in ‘93. As a result, the highest heel I could wear was 3”, and only briefly. The early ‘00s were brutal! That’s roughly when I quit caring about modern shoe fashion, and began a love affair with weird, unique, and/or vintage footwear. Really loved this one!!
I'm 56, and had never heard that heel height was dependent on the economy. However, I had heard that we bought redder lipstick when times were bad. I have no evidence for this, and I know our esteemed hostess doesn't 'do' makeup, but I would love to know the stats on lippy.
The argument I’ve heard for lipstick is that it’s a small, fairly affordable luxury, which makes it preferable to other luxury products in leaner times.
I think it’s that sales of lipstick go up in hard times - small luxuries...
March Gregoroff if you want to hear try looking up Syfya Nygard ( might have spelled her name wrong) she does a video on the history of lip stick
@@zenkar9804 thank you, will do
@@marchgregoroff4605 Safiya Nygaard is the proper spelling. This is definitely true for American women during WWII, red lipstick was seen as patriotic and a way for women to show their support for the war effort. I believe there was also a campaign that told American women that Hitler hated red lipstick 😂
Never heard the High Heel Recession Theory before - though my professor in university in the early 2000s put forward the Skirt Hemline Recession Theory that was very similar.
I also recall the early 2000s high heel horror - where there were ballet flats or five inch spikes, and NOTHING in between. The early 2000s were a bleak time for womens' fashion.
You could find *some* in between heights. Although most of those looked like very dated grandma shoes. 😅
The early 2000's were a nightmare. I remember the low rider jean butt crack and platform everything.
This video makes my data nerd heart so happy. Pop sci studies are awful, they undermine actual scholarly work and erode public trust of research and analysis. Thanks for applying your expertise to this one!
In the 90's, I heard the same theory, but referencing skirt length. I vaguely remember an Economics professor scoffing at it, and looking for the real data.
The only likely link between the state of the economy and the length _and fullness_ of skirts would be how much average people could afford to buy.
I would think skirt length is more closer tied to sociopolitical climates than economy, specifically correlated to each wave of the feminist movement. But that's just my theory, I'm not too interested in doing any specific research in that area
my dad said that today....
and I was like....hemlines went up in the 20s and stayed about the same until the 60s....with the mini skirt....
@@delicateghoul social political is more on par than economical reasons. Social political is the undercurrent that drives people
@@Butterflier00 20s was a tad bit shorter but 30s definitely got a bit longer and then 40s got a bit shorter because of rationing. 50s skirts could be long or short and got fuller and then skirts slimmed down then shortened a lot in the 60s.
Very interesting! I'm about halfway through the video but I also wanted to mention that correlation doesn't equal causation and trends come around about every 20 years anyway. So just because the trend is toward higher heels doesn't mean the economy has anything to do with it. What if we point to presidential elections and say when a conservative is an office heels are lower and when a Democrats in office heals are higher? What if I said that and then claimed the heel height was due to whether conservativeism or liberalism was the most popular at the time. There's probably just as much evidence for my random theory I just now made up as there is for the heel height economy theory xD thank you so much for your hard work and effort in making these videos
In the '60s, I heard this exact same 'study' - only it was skirt lengths, not heel heights lol ... I heard the skirt thing in the 80s, too, I think.
This was a really interesting video. I did a similar study when in college, on the relationship between women's skirt hem lengths and widths and the economy, during part of the same time period that you discuss (I only used 1850-1950). I also theorized that longer and fuller skirts embody both luxury (amount of fabric), nostalgia (similarity to styles of the past), and conservatism (cover up more of the body), which appeal to people when they are not doing well economically. I found that this theory tracked fairly well between 1880 and 1940 but not so much during the other decades.
I would suggest that one reason that we went back to kitten heels in the early 1980s was that Princess Diana favored that height. As someone who was in my early 20s at this time, I definitely noticed that the increase in fashionable low heel shoes mirrored what Diana was wearing just after she married Prince Charles. Love your videos, both educational and entertaining!
I was one of those people wearing combat boots in the 90s. And I’m glad for that- it was a very comfortable time in my style evolution. I tended to wear my docs with those floaty, floral, buttoned up dresses. Very Drew Barrymore in the mid 90s. I’d also wear my Chucks with dresses. It was a whole thing.
A very comfortable thing, certainly more comfy than the ridiculously high platform heels I was wearing a decade later. But now I wear either flats or AD shoes, and I’m back to being comfy again.
I seem to have bought my weirdest/highest shoes when I myself was in a depression 🤣, regardless of the economy. This was a great analytical breakdown 👍🏻
Shoe shopping therapy!! Deeefinitely a thing 😅
Oh yes, 14 cm with platforms, what was I thinking (dark thoughts, I guess)! :D
Thank you very much for that detailed response to the video. It really shows how difficult it can be to make broad generalization over history.
You and other people in the comment have pointed out a series of methodological flaws: sampling problems, cherry-picking, overgeneralization, confusion between correlation and causation.
But even if those methodological flaws were corrected, I'm not even sure that a well constructed study showing us a correlation between recessions and high heels would be on its own very helpful to understand fashion. Economy is only one among several factors that can influence fashion, and shoes are only a part of a general fashionable silhouette. I'm not sure that a study on these two elements taken in isolation would teach us very much about the real world.
Thank you! I saw that theory going around and just as a regular historian (not a shoe or fashion historian), I thought it was very dubious at best.
as a history nerd that did only basic art history at a pre-university level: same. it really shouldn't take a historian to understand that history is human and therefore, rather complex.
I was in elementary school during the early 2000s and wore a woman's size 6 by first grade... going shoe shopping for "dress shoes" was a time! We couldn't find hardly any flats in the woman's section and none of the children's shoes fit, so we would go through at least three shoe stores to find a pair of (usually ugly) flats so my mom wouldn't be forced to send her six year old to church in 4 inch stilettos!
I love this, such an interesting and informative way of debunking a very simplistic "myth". :)
Also, kudos on the subtle music changes in the background to que the different periods. 👌🎶
My heels went down as my age went up......
So true! 😆
Life's too short to be uncomfortable.
@@lucie4185 I am too short without heels... But prefer comfort now
My heels went down as my patience for them did. I'm 5'1" so I'm STILL gonna be short with heels on anyway, so...why not _not_ torture my feet all day/risk snapping an ankle?
Same. Back in my 20’s I would wear 4” stilettos. Now at nearly 40, I wear my comfortable Rockport wedges on occasion, but more of than not, if I consider wearing heels (2” extra comfy pumps by Clark’s), I’ll try them on, then I’m like “nope” and put on flats.
Oh my god, the struggle to find sensible heels in the 00s was real!! I remember my school shoes couldn't be trainers for uniform reasons so one year I ended up having to wear fairly high heels all winter, walking over rough ground with a heavy bag! I had 50-year-old knees at 14 thanks to that trend!
I feel this so much! My mom bought me SAS old lady shoes since they were the only flat non-trainers we could find!
You are completely right it is hard to actually get an accurate picture of the Whole world and shoe hight.
Honestly, if you overlaid avg heel height and the economic fluctuations on a graph, they are NOT going to match up - there might be a little bit more correlation if you compared heel height to # of women in the workforce, as that would drive shoe decisions much more than "the economy". Amazing video, Nicole!
Something that's not included in the studies, including this one, is the time it takes to design, source materials, manufacture, and ship shoes. Design trends can develop years before they actually hit the stores. I mean, we don't expect American Duchess to see an economic trend, say "Must make higher heels!!" and have shoes available on the site within 6 months.
Actually that’s about the turn around! The shoes that are coming out now were designed and sent off to start in November. If it weren’t for holidays slowing things down (China has a long holiday in Jan/Feb) the shoes would usually be 6 months design to on site. And that’s a small company!
@@NicoleRudolph so I can reasonably expect AD to make the shoes I like again in an 11 in 6months?
Interesting video, me and my friend were discussing what shoe styles would become more popular now that working from home is socially acceptable whether comfier styles come in because people don't need to show off or whether they go wilder because they are free of dress codes.
Could some increases in heel heights be because of structural reasons? Could it be that people figured out how to make higher heels because they they figured how to make it work. Or had materials that they didn't have in the past to be able to make taller heels work?
The amount of research that went just this video is astounding to think about. I mean I've kinda thought of this topic as a sort of Shower thought experiment, but I'm glad you did this video and basically answered this question for us, me specifically.
i love how nuanced life is. this is very interesting. i avoided the video in question cuz i’m wary of larger creators when it comes to history, but i’m excited to see this
I love this!!! I haven’t been following this channel for long, but I get the vibe that you’re the Caitlin Doughty of cos-tube. Can’t wait to see more!
You’re in for a good time on cos-tube! The beautiful thing is that Nicole isn’t the only one doing this fascinating kind of video. Cos-tube has some seriously academically motivated researchers presenting on topics they’re passionate about.
as an art student/nerd, i've always had my suspicions about that channel. however, i've never learnt anything about fashion history and thus couldn't ever place a finger on where they went wrong. thanks for this, very educational
Yes!!! Especially when you get to the 90's! I had the same reaction as you because I also remember the 90's as well as the high heels of the 2000's. But, I will admit I was total trash for the platforms tennis shoes and flip flops. 😂
Your research and knowledge is impeccable. For me it highlights, as do several of the comments, the need for what is generally the mid-heel, everyday walking shoes. I'm so tired of the only current choice being over 2 inches or flats. Any wonder I'm enthralled by the 20s/30s shoes. Bring them back, I say!
I would think that heel height trends have more to do with hem length trends than anything else. Some heel hights just look better with certain lengths of skirts. I also was in college in the early 2000s. I remember conducting walking tours for student housing in 5" platform heels. The expressions on whining 18 year old faces about tired feet when they were wearing sneakers and their mothers pointed out my foot wear was hysterical.
Just hearing you explain the study already made me realise that this was a hypothesis and they looked for evidence, rather than formulating a hypothesis on the data
The only shoe fashion change I can recall from my 1990's is the addition of high tops to the range of sneakers because 80% of us wore sneakers absolutely everywhere. 😉
Platform sneakers were huge in my neck of the woods in the 90s and Doc Martens too. So it was more thick, chunky. Nobody I knew was into ultra high heels even though Manolo references were all over the place because of Sex in the City.
Not that platforms are better to walk in than high heels. I turned my ankle more than once :/
@@cincocats320 oh man those platform sneakers! Lol I remember those well.
True. I was a teen in the 90s and most girls would wear jeans (Levis 501 were the most popular brand/model) and Converse or Doc Martens. For the boys it was mostly skater shoes and baggy, low worn jeans.
I was one of the few girls, who would 'dress up' and wear heals and make up and stuff. Which is kinda funny, because my style later became increasingly casual - my clothes today would be more appropriate for a school girl, then what I wore back then 😆
I can support your view of the 60s and 70s. One inch sling back shoes for most of the time with the occasional flat gogo boot. Evening could be a bit higher but us working and middle class people didn't do fancy galas and disco dancing wasn't as easy in heels later on. In the late 90s I discovered Birkenstocks! After that shoes became about the function of walking as the body aged and became fussy.
Wonderful video! Just wanted to point out one thing I noticed as a science teacher. You called this a theory, which colloquially is how we use the word. But in the scientific sense, this would be a hypothesis, something that relates two or more variables and can be tested. A theory ties together multiple lines of evidence(measurable facts), hypotheses, and laws (mathematical relationships that allow us to make predictions). Thanks for the well researched video!
This is probably because I was in private school, but I only wore flats and 1-2 inch heels in the early 2000s
The same goes for the other girls I knew
This could also be a difference between women's shoes and girls shoes
I think the heel goes up when the economy is up because that's when we don't need the practicality of a low or nonexistent heel and can be more eccentric with our fashion, and the heel goes down when we need to be more practical for work
I love this! I just did a shoe purge and few heels lived to stay in my pile.
Thank you for making this! I was so curious when I first started seeing this statement, and I was like "this needs more research." Nicole to the rescue!!!
I so appreciate that you approach this with good academic methods.
Also… Well done on Abby’s video! That was hilarious!
I feel like we need a cross-over that goes into if heels really makes your butt look better 🤔
What do I wear right now? Socks..What do I usually wear? 1920s inspired mens shoes/boots; because I can't be arsed to wear high heels in the office, and the boots are so much more comfy.
Nichole! you are spot on in this vid. I'm born in 1943 and have seen the crazy directions shoes and fashions have gone in the past years. There is nothing to do with recession or wealth. I postulate that the real difference is caused by engineering. Heels got higher and thinner because we had stronger materials and better glues. Add that to the idea that the next generation wants always to outdo the last, and you have wild designs and construction that make drastic design changes possible and desirable.
And this is why I watch people like you and not the trendy type of video that just do half the research and just use what matches the conclusion they want.
I was totally waiting for this LOL. It would be worth summarizing that what is represented in fashion or in how we would like to be perceived during downturns in the economy is that we would still like to appear as though we are not struggling, which may contribute to the rise of heel height as presented socially in high fashion or high optic settings. Ergo, dressing to the nines when you go out to a nice event, but actually renting the runway and eating ramen at home
Many years ago a fashion journalist pointed out that platform shoes (and, I would argue, extreme fashion in general) come into fashion roughly every 20 years.
She said that it’s because no one is going to go through the ankle twisting awfulness of high platform shoes twice.
Yep I had platform sandles in the early 2000's in middle school. Twisted my ankles multiple times
It sorta seems from the data that heel heights went up and styles started to vary more as women started getting more economic power and social liberties. Especially once women enter the work force in the 40s and again in the late 60s/70s you start seeing the really tall/wild shoes break out. Maybe because we could now buy a pair of “comfy work shoes” and “going out shoes” vs. one pair of utilitarian, everyday shoes you see in more “domestic” eras?
This video gave me so much to think about, love it!
I found that an excellent, well researched and well argued video essay. I always thought that theory a bit of a correlation rather than causation, but now it is clear it was "research" to support an argument that was inherently flawed as opposed to collecting data and extrapolating a conclusion. Thank you.
Tottering around college campus in the early 2000's on 4-inch heels: I felt that in my *soul.* (Ngl, I kinda miss those boots though...)
Thank you, we love watching your videos. I never dreamed I would watch a "shoe historian", but we are happy to have found you!
Hi, I have for a few years trained ballroom (a much more fun type of exercise than a treadmill or a jog around the neighborhood). For my training and competition I wear the traditional 1920's heeled shoe. 2" flared heal with a round toe in satin. I personally love those blue and gold 24-RSM 's and would gladly get a new gown to go with them. For reference, a new gown done "right" with all the Swarovski bits and all, costs about $ 1800 US or € 2000, give or take. New competition shoes cost $ 90-100 US, € 100-120 or at least did when I bought my new shoes in December 2019, and those look very much like the 25-RSM shoe.
The ladies who are also doing Latin (I only train Standard), they wear something looking very much like a 50's heeled sandal, with a 3" (or rather the highest they can wear and still reach down to the floor) stiletto, looking like a flared cuban heel.
The gent's don't come of shot free either. In Standard they wear a low heeled patent leather shoe, but when there is Latin on the menu, they wear a 1" to 1.5" cuban or higher (depending on the hight of the lady) heeled foot glove. Your historical shoes lives on in a very tangible way in dance studios and dance competitions all over the world, and they are still very pretty. Yours, Ann
I shall also add what I learned from being a child of the 80s: *heel height was then a show of power.* In the business world (and here I also include teachers, even of elementary school), the more authority a woman had, the higher her heels tended to be. For one personal example I contrast the costume of our school's female principal with the almost non-existent heels often worn by our young blonde Grade 6&8 teacher (usually with shorter-but-still-knee-length exceptionally-tight skirts; the principal by this time was male again and had taken quite a fancy to her).
I shall also note that *end of decade fashion tends to be a product of the cresendo'ing sensibilities of the past decade, rather than the shape of the decade to come.* It generally takes a couple of years for a new decade to distinguish itself.
you deserve sooo many more followers, you are one of the few sewing channels (also shoes, but i'm a tailor, pattern maker and designer;)) i get proper, extensive information from, and not just the basic knowledge! you're so talented and informed and it is a delight to learn from you
I had a feeling you were about to completely debunk this theory, but I love all the effort and research you put in to this
Classic correlation does not indicate causation case! Thanks for this analysis. Fun to watch! More in play is the technology that makes heel height possible. I remember that period of time where you could only find 4 inch heels at Dillard’s. I ended up with a closet full of shoes I couldn’t wear but hung onto for years cuz I felt guilty and because I found them pretty.
As a sociologist versed in statistics I would rather hypothesise that we simply have an overlap of fashion and business cycles. They are not related (or not much), but they run parallel so it is only natural that they will conjunct from time to time.
If anythink, I'd say that the lipstick effect has more sound theoretical assumptions (although no compelling empirical evidence beside a few anecdotal cases, as far as I know).
This is super interesting. I don't mind essay video at all because I don't have the concentration required to do this work myself 😌
I would just like to point that when a video is focused on measurements it would be very appreciated to have the conversion in international measurements written on the screen ^-^
Nicole has just served this theory on a silver platform shoe.
I agree with this video completely. I was in college during the "Grunge" era and didn't see to much of it outside social arena except for majors like forestry (my major) Agronomy, Vet med, etc where flannel shirts against the cold and sturdy boots were a must. It was the early 2000's before I was brave enough and fashion allowed really high heals but I do remember an elderly lady commenting to me on a pair of fetching peep toes I bought that she remembered owning a pair in the 40's and wear them while you still can. LOL!
What I have found, just from observing people around me, is that it seems more like the chunkiness of the heel changes more than the height. When people don't feel hopeful, it seems like they wear bigger, clunkier, chunkier shoes. this is what I have noticed anecdotally in my life
The 1990s had the Spice Girls and the massive platforms they wore, even platform sneakers!
This theory sounds like a fantasy, nothing to do with everyday reality. Bad economy means less income. That means less money for fashion, making do with what you have instead of replacing it. Also, it often means people trying to work more (often menial) jobs, calling for more practical (lower) shoes.
I love how specific and well-thought out this video is, it's fascinating.
Heels: Change hight
ModernGurlz: Coincidence?
Nicole Rudolph: Yes.
I love you both.
I absolutely agree with you, and the same argument has been made for years about hem length of skirts. Le sigh.
And I went the combat boot route starting in the advent of the Grunge era, as all 5'11" in bare feet of me was not going the stiletto heel way... can you imagine how many concussions from forgetting to duck through doorways there would have been? The clumsiness was bad enough from reaching that full height at age 13... but I digress. I think the early 2000's were a lot of fun for dress shoes, as there was a resurgence (at least in my area) of the modern Victorian walking boots with a more moderate heel, and they were super cute!
Yet another problem of correlation does not equal causation. There are other explanations for each of the changes. Thank you for your video and research!
The only time I see economy and fashion significanctly connecting is during wartime when fabric was limited so dresses/skirts became less bulky/puffy.
Thank you for making this video! I watched the other video and was a bit skeptical, but I'm not knowledgeable enough on shoe (or recession) history to tell what exactly sounded weird. Your explanation was very thorough and informative, just how I like it! 🥰
I always learn so much in your videos!! I'm super curious if we'll see an upturn in sales of high heels and business wear once we really exit pandemic-fashion and work-from-home pjs/loungewear.
That video popped up on my feed as well. Glad you're talking about it
would love a video looking into shoes in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries! this was such a fascinating video
I wish I could give multiple likes 🥰. This video was great with the analysis and the visuals/music 👍🏾. Personally, the subject of heel hight has always been an issue because I apparently have larger-than-average feet for a female 🤦🏽♀️. I had seen that video pop up recently and decided not to watch it because of the other similar comparisons to economy and fashion. I'm glad you watched it for us and gave a wonderful analysis.
I appreciate you sharing your knowledge debunking social media 'truths'
This video is such tea, i love niche, well-researched arguments. I would say that the common heel height going down, if it is related to economic success, has more to do with time periods that were feeling the benefits from large waves of women entering the workforce? Heel heights for common daywear heels went stayed constant around 1-2 inches during the Great Depression, and even decreased to that height again in the late 1950s when, again, more women entered the workforce, and stayed low in the early 60s as the economy was generally feeling the effects of a stronger/bigger workforce. They stayed at that practical height for most daywear in the 70s as shown by Nicole, despite the fashion heels that are the symbol of the era. That collective idea of heel height goes down in the 80s as lower shoes become more common again, during a time where there is a large wave of women entering the economy, and stays low in the 90s during the effects of that change.
This, plus the general trend that ideas in fashion are evolved until they become more extreme over time. Like in the 1970s, fashionable heel heights naturally grew to the iconically high platform level for the first time because, after decades of experimentation with heels, the world at large was finally ready to accept such an extreme version of heels into the collective culture. Each time in the 20th century that heels shrunk down, eventually people got more daring and extreme in the style again as fashion became more experimental for a variety of reasons (including, potentially, the economy and fantasy/escapism, women entering the workforce, general fashion experimentation, but not solely for those reasons).
All of this is conjecture, btw. Pls don't take what I say as facts, I'm just putting some thoughts out there in response to a good video :)
Thankyou for investigating this, its haunted me for years!
I appreciated your insight and the knowledge you shared. Although it might make for a catchy headline, correlation doesn’t equal causation.
I always saw the thumbnail of said video, scoffed at it and kept scrolling, thanks for debunking it!
The Spiders Georg Historian videos always make me giggle.
Also - that bit about you thinking about your mother's footwear reminded me of "Ah, ya muddah wears combat boots!" Which, to be honest, yeah - my mama's favorite hiking boots when we were in Girl Scouts were Army Surplus. Functional, but not fashionable. That didn't stop her from wearing them to PTA meetings. 😀
Thank you for the informative and well research the subject!
Loved the extended resources list, I hope it will inspire others down a similar path.♥
OMG!! I had those exact white perforated leather clogs from the Sears catalog. My best friend had navy clogs. We were the first to wear them in our high school...one of the only times in my life that I was "fashion-forward."
It’s been said that hemlines are also an indicator of the economy. As you so eloquently explored heel heights as economic indicators, I’d be interested in your findings on how long or short our skirts are. Heck, I just enjoy your voice and look forward to Sunday when I can listen to whatever you have to tell us.
I definitely want to debunk the hemline/economy concept too! It always forgets to acknowledge the rising hemlines of the 1910s and the economic recessions.
@@NicoleRudolph Yep. We’re women so we we wear whatever we please whenever we please. Economics be damned.
Especially looking at some of the examples you showed it seems to me that it's more cultural politics/counter culture movements and or social change (which may in some instances also be influenced by the economy and global events) that drive changes in fashion in general and thus also in heel heights. I saw the original video you reacted to recommended to me and immediately thought Well thats bs, so I was glad someone debunked it.
Thanks for your research and report! Can't believe anyone at IBM--or any company!--thought spending time on such a less-than half-baked theory was worthwhile.
I have never heard of this theory, but it was fascinating to look at nonetheless. Another thing you might want to consider as far as heel height is region. If you ask the average woman in Arizona what her go to shoe is she would probably tell you flip flops or sandals. While a woman in Alaska might tell you boots. I remember in the 90' wearing sneakers or western boots when it was cold and sandals when it was warm. Any other time I was bearfoot. That is still pretty much the norm for me. I was never really one for shoes. I remember in the 80's up my mom wearing heels to the office and an any formal occasions up until the economy tanked and she lost her job. By the time she returned to the workplace in '95 she was allowed a more casual dress code and typically wore sneakers to the office.
What I'm curious about based on a Margaret Atwood excerpt on lipstick is whether or not cheaper high heels are sold at a greater frequency during recessions, or if more expensive high heels are sold less frequently (like a great bargain of five for 30 vs a long lasting good quality heel for 30).
I think the 20th Century was a laboratory for designs of all kinds of things. And I hope that now that we have global marketplaces, all designs will be available all the time. People have decided what cuts and rises of jeans they like, the same with bras and briefs. Some people like to be dressed up in sequins, others love to dress up in tie-dyed hippie dresses. Do whatever you want with your hair length, cut, texture and color. It's a big world, and people can choose all kinds of stuff. The world economy runs of consumption, which is kind of bad for the planet. But the more we buy only what we really like and need, maybe things will not be so wasteful. I own no spike heels or sequins, but I'm glad you can have them if that's what you want.