Barthes: fashion system

is the structural analysis of

women’s clothing as
currently described in
fashion magazines; its
method was originally
inspired by the general
science of signs postulated
by Saussure under the name
of semiology.
• Saussure:that the
principles of semiology
can be abstracted and
used to analyze non-
linguistic sign systems.

• Barthes wanted to
analyze the relationship
between images and
text in the production
of Fashion
• Barthes homes in on
fashion as a system of
interrelated conventions
governed by precise
laws. He’s interested in
the way that these sign
systems produce not
clothing, but the abstract
notion of Fashion
• world of high fashion
industry uses images and
words to create an abstract
world of fashionableness
that must at once always
change (in order to continue
to sell new fashions) and
always stay the same (also
in order to continue to sell
new fashions).
• The signifier is the idea or the concept
that is attached to a particular thing
• Which is the signified (saying
something is “fashionable” is the
signifier, and the thing itself is the
signified – which has no intrinsic or
essential meaning without the
signifier).
• The sign is the combination of the
signifier and the signified
• sign system is the larger historical
system that secures the meaning of the
sign within a chain of signs, or in
relation to other signs.
 http://politicsoffashionuiuc.wordpress.com/tag/the-fashion-system/

• Mum jeans
 Example: mum jeans
• The Sign:Mum Jeans.
• The signified would be the object itself –the actual,
material thing, the JEANS
• –The phrase “mum jeans” is a signifier as it shows
our understanding of the object through a word or
phrase (or an image). But the signifier also includes
other meanings through which “mum jeans”
functions a a term
• not just as a denotative name for high-waisted,
pleated, “relaxed seat” denim trousers,
• but also as a connotative sign referring to a whole
host of ideas about mothers (whether or not a
person wearing them is a mother, or whether or
not a particular mother wears them, why would a
mother be wearing them) and their location in the
fashion system.
 A ‘semiotic’ reading of fashion

Playsuit
Boyfriend jacket
Vintage Coat