Imagine you’re about to get your high school yearbook picture taken and you really want to stand out. What would you wear to distinguish yourself from your classmates? Would bright pink lipstick, a cartoon print tie, or a blue steel pout do the trick? Perhaps all of those things in combination?
Economists can now answer this question using AI – and not only for you but for every single person who graduated high school between 1930 and 2010!
In a recent paper titled “Image(s),” economists Hans-Joachim Voth and David Yanagizawa-Drott analyzed 14.5 million high school yearbook photos from all over the U.S. Their AI tool categorized each photo based on what people were wearing in it, like “suit”, “necklace”, or “glasses.” The researchers then used the AI outputs to analyze how fashion had changed over time.
Images have been used to study fashion before, but researchers have rarely been able to process so many photos and also classify them by the items of clothing worn in one go. By doing so, Voth and Yanagizawa-Drott have accomplished something no one has before: a comprehensive, data-driven analysis of the evolution of style, at least for graduating American high schoolers. The breadth of their data allowed them to document many different trends, some of which we already knew about, but also some that were really quite surprising.
An economist’s guide to fashion
So how did yearbook fashion evolve over time? If you were a yearbook photographer working in the 1950s, you would have taken picture after picture of clean-shaven young men in suits and ties with neatly trimmed hair. Young women were less predictable: many were starting to experiment with jewelry, short haircuts, and low necklines.
Fast-forward to the 1970s, and we land in a completely different fashion era. Young men become more adventurous with their clothing choices. Some grow their hair long, others don bow-ties or necklaces. Many young women opt for long hippie-style hair, and earrings start becoming more popular.
Among the fashion innovators of the time was Steve Jobs, who opted for a tux, bow tie, and long hair for his yearbook photo (yes, his photo was part of the study’s sample!). This look had rarely appeared in yearbook pictures before Jobs, but became popular soon after he wore it.
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