When less is more.

Fashion is one of the greatest forces in present-day life. It pervades every field and reaches every class. Fashion leads business and determines its direction. It has always been a factor in human life but never more forceful, never more influential and never wider in scope than in the last decade, and it gives every indication of growing still more important.

I'd bet even the fashion statement-making New York Giants wouldn't guess what year those words were published. The quote is the opening paragraph of the preface of The Economics of Fashion by a Professor Paul H. Nystrom, published in 1928. A decade after the end of war, and nearing the end of a 21-month economic expansion on the eve of the depression. Any recession coming up is likely to be pretty mild historically. Our current expansion is going on 75 months and the one before that was 120. But still. Nystrom's words seem to ring pretty solid today.

Is the fashion industry procyclical? Of course it is. Fashion is a luxury good, so demand for it moves in the same direction with income. Everyone expects a recession. Consumer confidence is down. Job growth is dead in the water. Luxury brands are in for lean times, just like people are expecting lower spending on vacations, cosmetic surgery, and domestic help. So designers are competing for slices of a shrinking pie. But couldn't this easily spur even greater creativity and innovation, so that despite being in an economic slump the fashion cycle is booming? At fashion week, necessity is all that (!), plus the mother of invention.

Certainly, less business will be done than usual, and some designs will be muted, industry experts say. But at the same time, some designers will interpret the financial downturn as an excuse to turn up the fashion excess.... Just when you would think things would be more conservative, there are likely to be more lavish, extreme displays on the catwalk, Aguiar said. "If anything, people will be more desperate to get attention that they think is going to generate business,"...

Does anyone know what spending on fashion is annually, or maybe how cyclical it is?