From Gaga to tradwives: Signs of economic doom, according to the internet
What do Lady Gaga, Apple TV+’s Severance, lipstick sales, tradwives, ultra-thin models and corporate dress have in common?
According to the internet, they are the myriad horsemen of the impending economic apocalypse. Forget Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ assertion in Tuesday’s budget that Australia is “turning a corner”. In the social media sphere, the signs of financial distress are everywhere, with talk of “recession indicators” growing louder by the day.
Signs of the apocalypse? Corporate dress hits the red carpet; Apple TV+’s Severance; groceries as status symbols; the Lipstick Index; Lady Gaga making pop again; Mary Kate Olsen; and exposed hair roots.Credit: Aresna Villanueva; Getty Images
And they could have the last word in consumer confidence as social media users worldwide, including in Australia, pick up on cost-of-living cues as harbingers of a continued downturn.
In some ways, the economic accuracy of these recession indicators matters little: they are to economics what astrology is to astronomy – enigmatic ciphers of a collective shift based purely on vibes.
The proliferation of these memes reflects a collective anxiety around the current economic climate – from a tough housing market to soaring supermarket prices, it feels as though we are in a recession.
Many of 2025’s so-called recession indicators are wrapped up in nostalgia, looking back to the late 2000s and 2010s, when the world was plunged into the global financial crisis, or GFC. Take Lady Gaga’s return to pop music with the release of her album Mayhem. It is riding the recent wave of chart-topping pop songs from artists such as Charli XCX and Chappell Roan.
Theirs is music to lose yourself in – booming, hedonistic anthems for the dance floor to distract you from your low bank balance.
On TikTok, nostalgia for music of the 2010s has blossomed, particularly among Millennials, while “indie sleaze”, a fashion subculture that emerged in the mid-2000s, is on the rise.
Brand strategy consultant Eugene Healy thinks the return of the 2010s is in part a symptom of our “atrophying” culture, one in which “our inability to create newness has meant that the nostalgia cycles have gotten shorter and shorter”.
Healy points to the “Boom Boom” aesthetic – a term coined by trend forecaster Sean Monahan to describe the growing popularity of the excess of the 1980s – as another example of this.
He likens Boom Boom’s current popularity to a ship heading towards an iceberg.
“It’s who gets to be on the liferafts and who is going to go down with the ship,” Healy says.
“There’s this sentiment of impending disaster in the air, and we are responding to that with a sort of lavishness and an excess and performance.”
Never mind that these indicators have been cleansed of their original context through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. As Healy says, “we’re not nostalgic for the era itself. We’re nostalgic for an idea the era represented”.
Other indicators, such as fashion’s move away from body positivity (according to Vogue Business, only 0.3 per cent were plus size) and the rise of the “tradwife”, speak to a growing political conservatism, particularly in the US as the Trump administration dispenses with initiatives like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
Then there’s the incursion of the corporate world in pop culture – traditional suits and ties, particularly in womenswear, have been all over the catwalks, while television shows such as Severance explore the endless office slog of the 9 to 5.
Meanwhile, some recent cultural shifts speak more directly to an economic downturn. Exposed hair roots a la the Olsen twins, for instance, suggest that hair salon regulars can no longer afford to fork out for a full set of foils.
Additionally, a spate of marketing campaigns of late, including one for FILA featuring Hailey Bieber, have put a fashionable twist on groceries. As TikToker @kfesteryga pointed out last year, the rising cost of groceries points to fresh food shopping as a luxury commodity.
When celebrities such as Bieber pose with lavish bags of produce, or Kim Kardashian posts images of lush table arrangements of fruit and cheese (that we can only presume is destined for the rubbish bin, uneaten, when the night is over), it’s an expression of wealth.
This isn’t the first time people have attempted to draw a line between cultural forces at large and financial crises. The Lipstick Index, a term coined by Leonard Lauder, chair of the board of Estée Lauder, describes the phenomenon of cosmetic sales increasing during times of recession. Similarly, The Stripper Index describes how professions such as sex work, often heavily reliant on tips, suffer during periods of economic uncertainty.
Talk of hemlines, too, has been subject to economic variations, rising in the roaring ’20s before falling after the 1929 stock market crash.
Meg Elkins, a behavioural and applied economist at RMIT, says there is a kernel of truth to some of these indicators, but their effect is not necessarily sustained.
“Spending on footwear and clothing has actually trended down since we’ve come out of COVID,” she says, while spending on health is up.
She says while a desire for little luxuries, such as lipstick, may have risen in the early days of inflation, as economic hardship sets in, people are turning away from even these small treats.
Professor Robert Hoffman, a behavioural economist at the University of Tasmania, says these indicators may simply be a symptom of the echo chamber of social media, referencing an idea popularised by economist John Maynard Keynes in the term “animal spirits”.
“In the economy, people’s expectations of the future have a massive impact on where the economy turns,” Hoffman says.
“In other words, the economy could be perfectly sound, but if news or rumours spread and people repeat them, they’ll be in dire straits, and that tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
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