Social Mood Conference | Socionomics Foundation

[Article] Black Wedding Gowns: Not Just for Goths Anymore

2012, Andrea Dibben, Article, Cultural Trends, The Socionomist
By Andrea Dibben
Originally published in the March 2012 Socionomist

The white wedding dress—and its connotation of purity—is a big part of the fairy tale that most brides yearn for on their wedding day. So what prompted the world’s top wedding gown designer to color half her latest collection black?

“I did take it to a witchy kind of place,” Vera Wang told The New York Times. “For me, it helped build a sense of mystery that I was hungry for. And it added this sensuality and sexuality, and a little bit of severity, too.”1

Not Your Grandmother’s Wedding Dress: Vera Wang takes bridal wear to a “witchy kind of place.” (Source: Inofashion)

The spring 2012 season, for which Wang’s noir line was designed, is almost upon us. We will have to wait a few months to learn just how popular the midnight theme has become. But given the ongoing stock market rally at Primary degree, it will surprise us if these gowns have flown off the shelves—yet.

This is not the first time bridal fashions have featured the color black. Shortly after the October 1987 stock market crash, The New York Times reported on bridesmaids suddenly wearing black.2 The Times’ explained that “brides [are] marrying older,” and therefore have older bridesmaids, and older bridesmaids befit black dresses.

But socionomists saw that timing—and this one—as more than coincidental. In The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior, Robert Prechter noted that “anti-fashion fashions” such as black wedding dresses tend to become more popular during negative mood trends.3

Watch for noir nuptial gowns to become even more tempting if social mood resumes its downward trend. And near the bottom, look for other deviations from long-held wedding traditions.

Androgynous wear, anyone?■

CITATIONS

1 Bee-Shyuan, C. (2011, October 24). All dressed in black.The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/fashion/black-wedding-gowns-from-the-runway-to-the-aisle.html?_r=2&ref=style

2 Nemy, E. (1988, November 20). Style: New Yorkers, Etc. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/20/style/new-yorkers-etc.html?src=pm

3 Prechter, R. (1999). The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior (p. 232). Gainesville, Georgia: New Classics Library.

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Most economists, historians and sociologists presume that events determine society’s mood. But socionomics hypothesizes the opposite: that social mood regulates the character of social events. The events of history—such as investment booms and busts, political events, macroeconomic trends and even peace and war—are the products of a naturally occurring pattern of social-mood fluctuation. Such events, therefore, are not randomly distributed, as is commonly believed, but are in fact probabilistically predictable. Socionomics also posits that the stock market is the best available meter of a society’s aggregate mood, that news is irrelevant to social mood, and that financial and economic decision-making are fundamentally different in that financial decisions are motivated by the herding impulse while economic choices are guided by supply and demand. For more information about socionomic theory, see (1) the text, The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior © 1999, by Robert Prechter; (2) the introductory documentary History's Hidden Engine; (3) the video Toward a New Science of Social Prediction, Prechter’s 2004 speech before the London School of Economics in which he presents evidence to support his socionomic hypothesis; and (4) the Socionomics Institute’s website, www.socionomics.net. At no time will the Socionomics Institute make specific recommendations about a course of action for any specific person, and at no time may a reader, caller or viewer be justified in inferring that any such advice is intended.

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