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Pink Is Flashing and Flairing
Time to sober up is right. All of these clips express aspects of a reversal from peak that is playing out almost exactly like that of 1968/1969 from which hemlines collapsed, bright colors quickly faded and the stock market reversed from a historic bull market for the most speculative shares. Be sure and read the additional references below as they track the transition over the last two years and explain the significance of the fashion world's latest statements. It's interesting that while women appear to be moving away from the bright tones that dominated back in 2003, pink hues have become a staple in male wardrobes. This fulfills a key forecast from back in August, 1983, when the Dow was still under 2000, and a super-bullish issue of The Elliott Wave Theorist noted, "Remember, this is just the set-up phase. …When almost no one is willing to discuss financial calamity and men dress with flash and flair then you know we'll be close."  With the Midwestern office workers and middle school boys embracing the "power" of pink, we are close indeed.

EWFF, September 2005
The July issue cited a rise in the “feminine, caring” male role models and noted that the drift toward less stereotypically masculine fashions and lifestyles is a classic response to a bear market in social mood. When The Elliott Wave Theorist first identified this correlation in 1985, it also noted that a rise in “masculine,” “liberated” women is the flip side of this bear market trend. So far, it’s been a relatively quiet assault, but, in many areas, women have already moved beyond the in-roads created with the help of the women’s lib movement back in the 1970s.


EWFF, July 2005
Can you feel it now? In May, The Elliott Wave Theorist observed that the change to a Primary-degree decline is expressing itself across the cultural realm. June brought a wide array of cultural changes that shine an even brighter light on the path of the social mood. One trend in the fall of 2003 that EWFF traced “straight back to the vibrant pop scene of 1969” was a fashion preference for bright colors. That trend is now giving way. According to the latest headlines, the transition is to darker tones. “In fashion for the coming fall, black is back,” says a June 2 Wall Street Journal column headlined, “Going Over to the Dark Side.” In an effort to “boost sales,” U.S. retailers are pushing “more shirts and jackets in dark tones including black and burgundy after bright color fashions lost some appeal last year.” This Saks catalogue cover expresses the extent to which darker, bear market styles are taking over. It is completely filled with hollow-eyed, disinterested models striking somber poses in dark pant suits and skirts, which have fallen below the knee. In a December entry titled “Skin is On the Way Out,” EWFF stated that a cover up is an “inevitable” consequence of the bear market.

In a related shift, the “macho man is an endangered species.” This fits perfectly with EWT’s 1985 treatise “Pop Culture and the Stock Market,” which noted that the “falling transition” phase of a bear market is characterized by “feminine caring men.” “Today’s male is more likely to opt for a pink flowered shirt and swingers’ clubs than the traditional role as family super-hero.” “All the traditional male values of authority, infallibility, virility and strength are being completely overturned,” says a consultant to the French fashion industry. On June 19, The New York Times notes the move to pastel shirts and other “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” looks and says, “You can’t rely on gaydar anymore.” “Many men have migrated to a middle ground where the cues to pigeonhole sexual orientation are more and more ambiguous. The poles are melting fast.”

EWFF, December 2004
Skin Is On the Way Out
Back in September 2002 when stocks were approaching a low and long skirts temporarily reestablished themselves in many women’s wardrobe, the burqa made a brief appearance as a suggested fashion accessory. The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast offered the following analysis: "Bear market momentum must still be building because instead of embracing the gloomy style, the audience broke up the show with boos and whistles. Still, the impulse behind it is clearly bearish, as the basic instinct of fashion in a declining phase is to cover up."

One of the clearest cultural signs of the bear market’s reemergence over the course of the last eight months is a avant-garde shift away from the bare styles that pushed exposure of the female form to its natural limits in 2003 and early 2004. The trend was first spotted by USA Today in the aftermath of peaks for the major averages. In April, the paper used the very words EWFF used in 2002 to describe the new direction within certain avent-garde fashion circles:
It’s the Great Hollywood Cover-Up!
Celebrities are toning it down (though not totally)

Since then, a steady stream of fashion observers have said: “Goodbye to bare sexiness;” “People have overdosed on bare bellies;” and “Slutwear is so last year.” In September, the Wall Street Journal and USA Weekend both dubbed the trend “The Big Cover-Up.” The November issue of In Style notes that hemlines, the quintessential coincident cultural indicator, are falling again.

The “though not totally” comment in the subhead above is an important caveat, however. It reveals an oncoming trend, not an established one. When we mentioned it as the look of the future at the Atlantic City Money Show in August, a veteran retailer insisted that more modest fashions wouldn’t sell. Fashion conscious teens “won’t wear it.” Establishment retailers probably said the same thing about maxi-lengths skirts in 1968. But their expectations are the reason that these styles are inevitable. Just as investor bullishness has reached its upper limit, the skimpy fashions have progressed so far that even really large farm women are wearing them. To retain the element of surprise and reflect the bear market, fashion has to turn. At the bottom, the average retailer will eschew a projected rise to knee-length skirts as too risky.

EWFF, November 2003
Here’s [a] flash that goes straight back the vibrant pop scene of 1969:
Pretty in pink
..and yellow, orange, green and other colors of the rainbow
The fashionistas in the audience might be garbed in their perennial black, but designers are in a more upbeat mood, sending out a bouquet of garden-fresh colors for next spring. The fashion industry seems to be saying that if women would just wear a pink suit or a floral party dress, the world would be a happier place. In show after show being staged during New York’s fashion Week, vibrant color was a hallmark. Zac Posen avoided doing any clothes in black, preferring beachy shell pinks and seafoam green. “Designers are looking at spring as a time of revitalization and optimism,” says the director a color-matching service. For those who still didn’t get it, “Let the Sun Shine In” lyrics from the Broadway classic “Hair” on the soundtrack hammered home the point.
The Denver Post, September 21, 2003

One of EWI’s original observations on manifestations of a peak psychology was that “bright colors are associated with market tops and dull, dark colors with bottoms.”