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." |
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THE FASHION SYSTEM
User Review - KirkusIn Mythologies, Barthes hinted that fashion magazines might provide a ready field for semiological analysis. In The Fashion System (published in France in 1967), he appears at his semantical worst ... Read full review
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Common terms and phrases
according actually already analysis appears assertion association becomes belongs blouse body certain clearly closed clothing collar color combination commutation complete connotation consists constituted corresponds cultural defined denotative depending double dress elements ensembles entirely establish example existence expression fabric fact Fashion final formal function garment genera genus given gives hand implicit important inventory language least length limits linguistic longer magazine manner mark material matrix matter meaning nature neutral never noted object obviously once opposed opposition original particular piece play possible precisely present produces pure reality reason reduced refers relation remains rhetorical seems seen semantic short signified simple single situation skirt speak species speech structure substance syntagmatic systematic terminological tion transformation units usual utterance variant vestimentary code written clothing
Popular passages
Page 258 - ... quintessential woman . . . ; when noted, the boyish look itself has more a temporal than a sexual value: it is the complementary sign of an ideal age, which assumes increasing importance in Fashion literature: the junior; structurally, the junior is presented as the complex degree of the...
Page 258 - Hegel had already suggested that it was in a relation of signification with clothing: as pure sentience the body cannot signify; clothing guarantees the passage from sentience to meaning; it is, we might say, the signified par excellence.
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 151 - In other words, certain elements of symmetry can coexist with certain phenomena but they are not necessary. What is necessary is that certain elements of symmetry do not exist. It is the. dissymmetry that creates the phenomenon...
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 10 - Mauss; 14 the function of the description of Fashion is not only to propose a model which is a copy of reality but also and especially to circulate Fashion broadly as a meaning.
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.
References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Fashion System |
| Author | Roland Barthes |
| Translated by | Matthew Ward, Richard Howard |
| Edition | reprint |
| Publisher | University of California Press, 1990 |
| ISBN | 0520071778, 9780520071773 |
| Length | 303 pages |
| Subjects | › › Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General Social Science / Popular Culture Social Science / Sociology / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |