Dough! Magazine
The Recession Issue
A LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
THE EDITOR
Recessioncore first made waves on social media back in January of 2023 at the hand of a fashion influencer slash prophetess. Since then, it has equally confused both those on and off the runway and even those that line the front row. Dozens of hastily published think-pieces released within the week would seek to analyze the trend, newsworthy for a widespread revulsion to the overt aestheticization of bland and budgeted lifestyles that succeeded the 2008 housing crisis. None however, would question its credibility in forecasting post-pandemic economic downturn with a lack of influencers or runway models sporting flashy jewelry. And none have since reckoned with the fact that the statement necklace has been dead since 2013.
No one I’ve spoken to about the (now long-irrelevant) fad can seem to agree on its defining aesthetic characteristics. Some point to structured, utilitarian work wear and others simply mention the color “beige” a lot. Myself, I’m reminded of the viral AW22 campaign for Barcelona-based brand, Paloma Wool. The campaign, photographed from a birds-eye-view, pictures minimally accessorized and bare faced models posed elegantly passed out on a big white bed. They shuffle between a patent leather knee-high boot or loafer and almost all are seen in a chunky knit and midi skirt combo. Their faces are dewy, their sheets disheveled. They are all wearing something gray.
Although this is all somewhat silly-sounding, I’m sympathetic to how teens and twenty-somethings today might assume a recession materializes; recently out of work women in gray cashmere sweaters, passed out face first before having the chance to take their shoes off. But this is not a fashion magazine. We are not so much interested in tomato-themed dress, or even the specific aesthetic indicators of recessioncore for that matter. More so, we’re curious why was it that so many young people latched onto a trend that so auspiciously predicted recession-wear and for that matter, were so plainly wrong?
Granted, we walk amongst the likes of $19 lox bagels, $5 boxes of Hamburger Helper and $20 spoonful portions of caviar renamed “bumps” after the classic spoonful-sized doses of white powdery substances we might shovel into other adjacent orifices.
But just because $19 bagels might herald a recession, technically speaking, we haven’t found ourselves in one since the beginning of COVID, which started in February of 2020 and lasted a mere two months. Despite its looming aura that is totally and irrevocably a bad vibe, many have since pointed this out after recessioncore fatefully faded into obscurity. NPR’s Planet Money podcast would appropriately dub this phenomenon a “vibecession” in September of 2022 right before the International Monetary Fund (IMF), on Wednesday October 11th, published a public warning that we could likely expect a downward economic spiral in the following year of 2023.
But without an Econ major and in some cases even with one, it can be hard to navigate what is real and what is not in the crude and confusing candyland of money. When TikTok users forecast micro-trends born from the aesthetics of economic downturn and peddle get-rich-quick-amid-recession investment ventures that are always disclaimed, without exception, as being *NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE* it can be cruel to expect we know how much interest rates are fluctuating. Because without a lived experience of what a recession might actually feel like, those of us who were too young to have been paying rent in 2008 are left in the dust of naivety, with only retold fragments of a bleak reality we are told, year after year, we might be on the cusp of being even more unemployed than we already are.
Luckily, the following pages attempt to make all of this sound drastically less boring.
Chrisaleen Ciro, a food and labor politics writer who spends her days tending to a rooftop community garden in Midtown, investigates a chicken wing spot on the Upper East Side who is single-handedly resuscitating New York’s “Recession Special.” Sam Venis, a Brooklyn-based tech writer sick of stealth-wealth, makes a case for bringing back stretch limos (which have seemingly perished). Our own Emma Slack-Jørgensen recounts the fall of the “Caviar Bump” in the West Village while Hope Donovan, NYC-based writer and NYU student, tells us why Hailey Bieber’s unintimidating street style comforted the girls early pandemic. And Corissa Steiner, finance-journalist and our eye-on-the-inside financier, explains all that a “run on the bank” entails and why, since the inception of the modern bank, we willingly sign up to losing it all.
As we part ways, I should disclaim that we do not wish to echo your anxieties of economic strife, only to ground your understanding of recession beyond the immeasurable bounds of online discourse. But I’m afraid I cannot promise they won’t be at least somewhat troubling. They are stories, mostly confined to five highly populated boroughs, on how complex economic factors and statistics actually manifest their way into our grueling, money-driven lives. So, if you are a person who has at one point in their lives wondered “Why can’t we just print more money?” or in the most extreme of cases, recorded a TikTok styling thrifted gray blazers into “recessioncore fits,” we dedicate this issue to you.