Steven's review
The Fashion System
by Roland Barthes
Steven's review
The Fashion System by Roland Barthes
Steven's review
rating:
bookshelves:
literary-theory
Using as his source French fashion magazines from 1958 and 1959, Barthes "reads" clothing to determine its system of meaning. "The magazine as a machine that makes fashion" (51) is indisputable now (and was it ever in doubt by those in the industry?), but in 1967 when this book was first published it had the whiff of revolution about it. Doesn't take very many pages before you're into doctoral-level semiology--but what would you expect from the founder of the study of signs? That makes this a highly specialized text and difficult reading for non-specialists. It does contain a neat refutation of one of Saussure's fundamental points--the arbitrariness of the sign (215) while at the same time pointing out that the Fashion sign is arbitrary because it is "exempt from time: Fashion does not evolve, it changes; its lexicon is new each year, like that of a language which always keeps the same system but suddenly and regularly changes the 'currency' of its words."...more
