Facebook has recently been serving up clothing ads in my sidebar, and though I’m not a potential customer, I take an interest in such things because fashion is a handy way of tracking the transitions in the cycle of visions that I’ve been detailing at this blog.

So I clicked through and what leaped out at me was how similar many of the styles were to those of 1968-69. There were the same free-floating shifts and tunics and smocks, all of them designed to conceal the natural curve of the waist and hips. And there were also a few extremely full-skirted items that have the same effect.

This is significant. Though I’ve never fully deciphered the fashion cues that go along with each phase of the cycle, I do know that styles like these invariably appear at a moment when all the familiar “grownup” solutions to current problems have failed. They evoke an adolescent appearance — in contrast with the more womanly silhouette that prevails at other times — and seemingly represent an attempt to summon up the fluidity and openness to alternatives of the adolescent brain.

That’s exactly the kind of crisis we’re in right now, and we need all the innovative solutions we can get.

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