Is a recession coming? Economists say look at women’s lips
CNN
How do we know if the economy is on the decline? The answer might be on our lips.
A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link. How do we know if the economy is in decline? The answer might be on our lips. Estee Lauder chairman Leonard Lauder created the lipstick index during the economic downturn following September 11, 2001. He noticed that the purchase of cosmetics, lipsticks in particular, tend to be inversely related to the economy because women replace more expensive purchases with small pick-me-ups. In fall 2001, US lipstick sales increased by 11%. And back during the Great Depression, cosmetics sales overall increased by 25%. In 2020, at the height of the Covid economic downturn, Estee Lauder’s CEO Fabrizio Freda said that the lipstick index had been replaced by a skincare item as customers donned masks and worked from home. “The lipstick index has been substituted with the moisturizing index,” said Freda. “But the concept of the index is still there.” Now we may be seeing that phenomenon rear its head once more. Sephora recently announced a record sales year and data from consumer research group Circana shows that prestige beauty growth has outpaced mass beauty sales, growing 9% and 2%, respectively in the first quarter of the year.
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