The Fashion SystemIn his consideration of the language of the fashion magazine—the structural analysis of descriptions of women's clothing by writers about fashion—Barthes gives us a brief history of semiology. At the same time, he identifies economics as the underlying reason for the luxuriant prose of the fashion magazine: "Calculating, industrial society is obliged to form consumers who don't calculate; if clothing's producers and consumers had the same consciousness, clothing would be bought (and produced) only at the very slow rate of its dilapidation." |
Contents
II | 3 |
III | 19 |
IV | 27 |
V | 42 |
VI | 57 |
IX | 59 |
XI | 71 |
XII | 87 |
XVIII | 189 |
XIX | 191 |
XX | 200 |
XXI | 211 |
XXII | 213 |
XXIII | 223 |
XXIV | 225 |
XXV | 235 |
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Common terms and phrases
accessory actually analysis assertion of species association belt blouse body buttons cardigan classification Claude Lévi-Strauss coat collar color commutation test connotation constituted cool jazz corresponds cover girl cultural defined denotative dress elements ensembles entirely equivalence example existence fabric fact Fash Fashion magazine Fashion sign Fashion system Fashion utterance formal function genera genus hand highway code implicit insofar intended object inventory language Lexicologie lexicon linen linguistic material matrix ment metalanguage metaphor mobile nature neutral notation object aimed obviously opposed opposition paradigm parataxis phonemes piece poplin possible precisely pure real clothing real garment real vestimentary code reality refers relation rhetorical signified rhetorical system semantic units semiological signification simple skirt speak speech structure substance suppleness sweater syntagm syntagmatic systematic terminological system tion toque transformation twin set usual units variant vesti vocable weekend word worldly signified written clothing written garment
Popular passages
Page xi - Calculating, industrial society is obliged to form consumers who don't calculate," writes Roland Barthes; "if clothing's producers and consumers had the same consciousness, clothing would be bought (and produced) only at the very slow rate of its dilapidation...
Page xii - In order to blunt the buyer's calculating consciousness, a veil must be drawn around the object - a veil of images, of reasons, of meanings; a mediate substance of an aperitive order must be elaborated; in short, a simulacrum of the real object must be created, substituting for the slow time of wear a sovereign time free to destroy itself by an act of annual potlatch.
Page xii - ... what is remarkable about this image-system constituted with desire as its goal is that its substance is essentially intelligible: it is not the object but the name that creates desire: it is not the dream but the meaning that sells.