The bigger the crisis, the higher the heel?

Did you too spent the last year and a half in a comfortable jogging suit? Good news: We’ll be dressing up again soon. In fact, studies show that in recent economic recessions, women have tended to wear higher heels. „During the Great Depression in the 30s, the Oil Crisis in the 70s and wen the dot-com bubble burst in the 2000s, sales increased noticeably“, says Elisabeth Semmelhack, fashion expert and author, in her book „Heights of Fashion: A History of the Elevated Shoe“.

IBM researchers also confirm that women’s heels have been a measure of economic stability for decades. Experts believe that they serve as an escape from the dreary reality, as a form a fashionable escapism. The Korean researcher Insook Ahn, who analyzed the US Vogue fashion spreads from 1950 to 2014, also came to the conclusion that high unemployment rates resulted in higher heels.