What’s a sure sign of recession? It’s not just a decline in GDP, it’s also a surge in lipstick sales. Years ago, Leonard Lauder put forth the idea that when times were tough, women would skip high-ticket items in favor of simplier pleasures such as lipsticks. Now, Kline & Co., with more than 50 years of lipstick sales data on the books, has proved Mr. Lauder right. Kline’s statistician and manager of econometrics Dr. Noel Lim has examined the past 50 years worth of...