that economic model involving hem-lines is broken
I think the original “Freakonomics”-esque study might have been that one which correlates women’s hem-lines with the economy. This seems to me somewhat an accident of a revelatory moment as the 1920s flushed into the 1930s, though the sociology behind it — carefree during those wild and crazy partying days and then practical and earthly as you forge ahead with basic survival in mind– is probably apt enough.
I will note however, that we just had a three day spurt of 100 degree temperatures followed by a current spurt where the temperature has plunged down twenty-five or thirty degrees and a bleak gray cloud portends frequent rain. The hem-line was just about as far up as it could go, and now has gone down to the floor. This indicates one of two things. Either the local economy just sky-rocketed and then plummeted, or, my theory, the length of hem-lines are better correlated to changes in the weather. But that’s just a crazy theory of mine.