The Pittsburgh Press (June 18, 1946)
Love: Skirt economics
By Gilbert Love
And now let us consider the length of women’s skirts and their relationship to business cycles.
As you probably have read, the threatened comeback of the long skirt is being viewed with alarm in some quarters because, these quarters explain, longer skirts have always accompanied depressions. I’ve been doing some research on the subject – following the wriggly lines of business charts, gazing at pictures in reference books, and rooting through files of The Press covering the past 60 years.
After looking at some of the long-skirt styles of the past – the “tube dress,” the “bag dress,” the “hobble skirt,” and others – I join the viewers-with-alarm. But not in fear that longer skirts will be accompanied by a depression. On that score, my research enables me to make a reassuring statement. To wit:
‘Taint necessarily so.
In the first place, my reference book pictures don’t show anything except long skirts before the present century. Certainly the world wasn’t in a continuous depression all those centuries.
Bell-bottom skirt appeared
At the beginning of the 1900s, women were wearing a sort of bell-bottom skirt, which probably was a good deal more practical than the hoop skirt of the 1800s, but still touched the sidewalks. In 1903, when there was a little dip in business activity, the skirts were about the same length.
Another business recession occurred in 1908 and 1909. But skirts, instead of being longer, were short. Yes, siree! They revealed the feet.
In 1914 and part of 1915, business fell off considerably, but skirts remained “short.” And “bloomer girls” actually were showing heavily-stockinged legs in sports activities.
Two years later – wow! Daring young women were wearing skirts that stopped several inches above their ankles, revealing most of their high-topped shoes.
That was a boom time. However, when the post-war depression came, in 1921, skirts were even shorter. The hem lines were about a third of the way up to the knees. As for their bathing suits – police were warning girls who exposed bare knees between rolled hose and the hems of their voluminous skirts.
Skirts began to descend late in 1922, when the depression period was about over. By 1924, which was a pretty good year, they were within a few inches of the shoetops. But shorter bathing suits and rolled hose no longer created any official excitement.
During the boom years of the 1920s, skirts became shorter, eventually reaching the knee just before the 1929 crash. This was the era of the flapper, and alarm over the destination of the younger generation. Bathing costumes were approaching the maximum of exposure, although they had not yet been divided in the middle.
Skirts, business dropped together
True enough, the hemlines of skirts began to droop in back during 1929, as though heralding the downward movement of lines on business charts. In 1930 the entire skirt was going down. By 1932, when business and industry were at a very low point, the skirt was too. The hem was perhaps six inches above the ground in daytime clothes, and at the floor in evening gowns.
Skirts stayed fairly long during the next few years, then started a gradual upward movement. They continued to shrink right through the business recession of 1938, and reached the knee a year or so later. There they have stayed, up to now.
So you see, skirts have sometimes followed the business charts downward, and sometimes they haven’t. You also can see that there has been a steady trend toward greater exposure during the past 40 years.
In this respect, skirts are much like the business charts. Both have had their dips, but even in these periods they’re higher than they were at the beginning of the century. The long-term trend of both seems to be upward.