BusinessWeek Logo
What's Selling? The Great Depression

By Ellen Gibson

What's Selling? The Great Depression

With pundit after pundit predicting the worst downturn “since the 1930s,” perhaps it was inevitable: The Great Depression is making a cultural comeback, resurrected at social gatherings, on fashion runways, and, perhaps, in the future marketing plans of some companies.

In New York City, twentysomethings are throwing Depression parties, where the clothes are ’30s vintage and the playlists favor Big Band numbers and Dust Bowl ballads. Evite, the online party-invitation service, says such bashes are on the rise nationwide (table). Depression fascination, says American Studies professor Bryant Simon of Temple University, makes sense at a time when people may be “looking for authenticity in a highly commercialized society.” Maybe so. But the fascination is also moving merchandise. Depression chic has already hit the fashion runways. Organic by John Patrick, a ready-to-wear label, is showing prairie-style cotton-check and hand-spun floral dresses in its spring 2009 collection. Newsboy caps and suspenders are core accessories in the Benjamin Bixby 1930’s menswear line designed by André Benjamin (aka rapper André 3000).

There’s also a spurt in demand for Depression-era art and literature. Netflix rentals of The Grapes of Wrath, the 1940 film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel, are up. John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1955 best-seller, The Great Crash 1929, recently climbed to No. 87 on BarnesandNoble.com’s sales rankings, up about 20,000 spots from a year ago. And in an otherwise disappointing auction of photo prints at Sotheby’s on Oct. 14, Dorothea Lange’s White Angel Breadline sold for $134,500, well above the presale estimate. While reluctant to ascribe the high bid to an emerging Depression art market, Christopher Mahoney, senior vicepresident of Sotheby’s photographs department, says there was immense interest in the piece, in part because its subject matter makes it “a key image in the 20th century.”

Finally, there’s evidence that businesses may be looking to make some hay of their past hard times. Spurred by client requests, The History Factory, a research firm that writes histories for corporations, has just launched a service that may help with that. A typical request, says Bruce Weindruch, the firm’s CEO: “ ‘Give me an overview of any products we developed during the Depression.’ ” What his firm finds, Weindruch says, can be used to reassure employees or woo customers. “We recently informed a major retailer that it had opened a branch on Wall Street in 1932,” he says. “That can become fodder for advertising, with the message: ‘We didn’t abandon you then; we won’t abandon you now.’