Word: fashion
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Historically speaking, fashion trends and tastes often serve as early harbingers of economic change. In the booming, pre-Crash 1920s, flapper hemlines bounced giddily to the knee before falling down to the ankles in the depressed 1930s. The 1960s' youthquake, complete with postage-stamp-size miniskirts, heralded a similar stylistic ebullience before the oil crisis of the 1970s plunged fashion back into an earnest, hippie frame of mind...
...current shift back to black has none of the elements of the sloppy secondhand-Rose ethos of early 1990s' grunge. This time around, fashion's mood swing has a decidedly sharper edge, as designers like Nicolas Ghesquière of Balenciaga, Alber Elbaz of Lanvin and Narciso Rodriguez are trading in last season's brights for severe black cocktail dresses and structured suits. At Yves Saint Laurent, designer Stefano Pilati dressed his models in black bowl-cut wigs and black lipstick to give his simply spliced jackets and tunic dresses a somber, graphic edge. Even Christian Lacroix, famous for his flamboyant...
...they definitely influence the color story," says Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute. "Black is always the color people rely on most often in tough times, especially if they're going to spend on big-ticket items." Eiseman, who prepares an annual color forecast for the fashion and home markets, says black will most likely be included in Pantone's selection of the top 10 colors of 2008. "Psychologically, it's also the color people wrap themselves in to become impervious to the outside world. It's a security blanket," she adds...
Black is seeping into the beauty and home markets too. Baccarat just introduced a collection of black crystal goblets, and Chanel Beauté's black satin nail polish is one of the brand's best-selling products. Costume jewelry from Lanvin, a fashion insider must-have, features black ribbons and stones. French perfumer Kilian Hennessy, who introduced a fragrance collection last November called By Kilian, has set himself apart from the trend of transparent scents by introducing a more complex and mysterious composition called L'Oeuvre Noire...
...inevitably, the market found it. By the late 1960s, peace symbols were appearing on coffee mugs, miniskirts and ponchos and were dangling from chains around the necks of guys you would expect to see at the Playboy mansion. Duplicated endlessly as a hip fashion accessory, it threatened to devolve into a meaningless emblem of benign and groovy sentiment. It started looking corny, a kind of smiley face before there were smiley faces...