Happy days (for some) with a 460-page Vogue

 
On the up: economist Tim Harford (Picture: BBC)
BBC
5 August 2014

We are all used to the Hemline Index as a guide to economic health. Is it now time for the Vogue Index? As our economy picks up, so too has the fashion bible, which has just announced its heftiest annual ad revenue since 2008, the year of the crash. The latest Vogue, with Cara Delevingne on the cover (natch), lands with quite a thunk. It’s 460 pages, of which two-thirds are advertising.

The Londoner called a friendly economist, Tim Harford, to find out whether we can all pin up our hemlines again based on Vogue’s figures. “Is the thickness of Vogue indicative of an improving economy? Well yeah,” says Harford, author of The Undercover Economist Strikes Back. But he also suggests that this is really an indicator of one particular sort of wealth — that at the top end.

“Remember, this is only true for the kinds of people who buy things from Vogue,” he said, before recalling an ad in the US edition in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse at the depths of the crash. It implied money could be saved on expensive haberdashery bills. “The ad was for a $975 leather-bound Smythson sewing kit. I think that tells you all you need to know.”

So what about the Vogue Index? Why not, says Harford, who reminded us that there are already indices for cranes above the skyline and sales of lipstick, and there used to be one for the thickness of local newspapers.

Vogue publisher Stephen Quinn is chuffed: “When the UK economy grows big and fat, we’re happy to join the parade.” Surely he means catwalk?

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