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http://dx.doi.org/10.7233/jksc.2015.65.7.086

The Relationship between the State of the Economy and High Heel Height - Based on Pump Style Shoes on Fashion Editorial Section of US Vogue -  

Ahn, Insook (Dept. of Fashion Design, Chung-Ang University)
Publication Information
Journal of the Korean Society of Costume / v.65, no.7, 2015 , pp. 86-100 More about this Journal
Abstract
This study is to investigate the relationships between heel height and macro-economic factors - recession and unemployment; and to analyze the time lags reflecting economic factors on heel height index using U.S. data. The life-history evolution theory was applied to propose the relationships studied. The data for the heel height measurements of women's shoes - pump style only - were obtained from US Vogue fashion editorial sections on spring and fall editions from 1950 to 2014. I divided the heel height by the length of the shoes in order to standardize the data. Total of 1581 samples were used, and heel height data were aggregated to create a yearly average. To explore the relationships between macro-economic factors and heel height, this study used OLS of Stata 13 program. The main findings show that unemployment rates influenced heel height for three years in a positive direction. Furthermore, the effects of unemployment rate from two years ago on the current heel height were very close to being on a significant level.
Keywords
business cycle; high heel; unemployment rate;
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Times Cited By KSCI : 6  (Citation Analysis)
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