Have you recently found yourself growing your own veggies, skipping hair appointments, keeping your nails short – maybe dallying over a Labubu plushie or "treating yourself" to a designer lipstick? Congratulations: the internet might think that you're signalling a recession.
Social media communities in 2025 have a new favourite game: spotting "recession indicators". A Labubu on your bag? Recession indicator. Short manicures, minimalist interiors, a sudden burst of DIY projects, a return to traditional lifestyles and skinny culture? Recession indicator. A The Devil Wears Prada sequel, or Coca-Cola putting names back on bottles? Definitely also recession indicators. The social-media-savvy among readers may have noticed this peculiar trend building over the past few months – particularly non-economist US influencers have been almost gleefully dissecting consumer culture's tiniest shifts, turning them into bite-sized pop-economics. Sometimes it may seem hard to tell whether it's genuine concern or a tongue-in-cheek coping mechanism in uncertain times, but it's catching on, not least due to consumer confidence worldwide plummeting.
Small luxuries in lean times
As human beings, we are hard-wired to see patterns within our immediate surroundings. Few of these patterns have been as enduring in economic folklore as the "lipstick index". Coined by Estée Lauder chairman Leonard Lauder during the 2000s and popularised again during the 2008 crisis, the idea behind the hypothesis is simple: when times get tough, people swap out big luxuries for small indulgences, like lipsticks.
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