Hemline Index? President of UTSC Charity Fashion Show has speculations
Longer hemlines stealing the limelight at UTSC Charity Fashion Show in Hart House. (Photo By: Vyusti Shroff // The Underground)
Diverse hemlines made their debut this year at the UTSC Charity Fashion Show but somewhere along the way, midi skirts were outnumbering their competitors and stealing the show. Longer hemlines at the runway have historically indicated troubled financial times ahead, giving rise to a unique term - The Hemline Index.
The Hemline Index proposed by George Taylor states women’s hemlines are shorter during economic prosperity and the hemlines grow longer during economic downturns, suggesting a positive correlation between the state of the economy and skirt hemlines according to The Oakland Post.
2025 has seen historic stock market crashes with over $10 trillion dollars wiped off the global market reports Reuters. Amongst this economic turmoil, the hemline index has resurfaced and predicted to spike up according to Google trends.
“A lot of the things in life, like art and fashion get affected by the current economic environment, and then the economic environment also feeds back into that loop. So it's a give and take,” said Faith Chhayong.
Faith Chhayong is the President of the annual Charity Fashion Show at University of Toronto Scarborough. Her experience in fashion management contributes towards understanding the intertwined nature of fashion and finance.
Intersectionality of fashion and finance
The fashion market is a major contributor to the economy and estimated to generate $1.2 trillion in 2025 according to Statista. It is noteworthy that the skirts and dresses market specifically will generate a revenue of $144 billion in 2025.
Within the fashion industry Vogue is fawning over longer hemlines in their 2025 fashion guide, indicating some increase in hemline lengths this year.
“I think hemlines have grown, like, about an inch and a half since the stock market started dropping,” said Chhayong. She adds that it is often surprising for people to discover that economic trends impact the fashion industry because the two industries appear very separated from one another.
Search trends reveal a 12 per cent growth in the term “modest maxi dresses” hinting at increasing interest towards longer hemlines, reports Inherent - a fashion blog tracking clothing styles.
“I think now that a lot more women are getting into finance and getting into these cross fields, that we're really seeing more correlations between arts and finance,” said Chhayong.
Dr. Alexandra Palmer, a design historian specializing in textiles and fashion history at University of Toronto and formerly Royal Ontario Museum believes in a different approach towards examining the influence of fashion trends and stock market.
Palmer says creative industries like the fashion industry are constantly changing and cannot be predicted easily because “fashion is much more fluid and diverse at the moment.”
Runway to reality: following the hemline index
Research performed by Nataliia Legka at Kyiv School of Economics revealed that it can take as long as three years after an economic boom or downturn for the hemline index to reflect in clothing. Legkas research revealed low correlation between length of skirts following the hemline index.
Chhayong partially agrees, she says that it is difficult to do a “one by one correlation” for hemlines because a single year can have many trending skirt lengths.
“I do see maybe bigger fashion houses kind of making their skirts a little bit longer, doing more maxi skirts, stuff like that,” said Chhayong.
Chhayong adds that the popularity of mini skirts during the economic prosperity of the flapper era in contrast with longer hemlines after The Great Depression leads her to believe “there is definitely some sort of correlation” between hemlines and the economy.
The hemline index specifically originated around 1920 in response to the shorter hemlines of the flapper era, reports The Gauntlet, a newspaper run by University of Calgary.
Harper's Bazaar published an article telling people to “drop that hem” while Vogue highlighted long hemlines and mid length skirts in 2011, exactly three years after the devastating financial crisis in 2008.
Palmer feels that despite the hemline index and online trends, much of the deciding power resides with fashion designers and the kind of hemlines they want to create.
She adds that “the hemline index is a way of mitigating risk, somehow being able to plan” contrasting with fashion, which is an industry where “you need to take risks. It's all a risk.”
So, as the evening sun casted a soft glow from the office window, Chhayong decided to steal one last glance at her phone - stock portfolio still in the red - and she couldn’t help but realise the unpredictable nature of everything around her. She smoothed down her skirt, preparing to leave for home and the irony of her falling hemline brushing the floor felt oddly in sync with the falling stocks.
