BA1 CLASS READING - INTRODUCTION TO THEORY - FASHION SYMBOLS AND CODES (A BIT OF A KILLER) - this reading is extracts (...) from the set text.

CHAPTER 3 - FASHION CYCLES, SYMBOLS AND FLOWS, FROM FASHION - THE KEY CONCEPTS. JENNIFER CRAIK. 2009.

As we have seen fashion is not just a covering for the body but a means of communicating about the body and can thus be considered a symbolic system where clothes and the rules that govern how they can be worn can be seen as a type of language or set of signs. The theories (previously) discussed ...  have focused on theories that posit fashion as a system in relation to external factors such as class differentiation, economic development, psychological needs, or the civilising process. We now turn to fashion theories that attempt to explain how fashion can be seen as an internal system of signs and symbols that create a (quasi) language.

To understand this we need to apply semiotic and linguistic models to the elements of apparel and adornment and the codes and rules concerning them. To do this, we analyze not only the clothes themselves but how clothes relate to the body and how clothes enable or equip the body to perform as a social body through gesture and performance.

The theorist most strongly associated with this approach is Roland Barthes, who wrote the now-classic book 'The Fashion System' (1984). Barthes was influenced by the theory of structuralism in postwar French anthropology and linguistics, which examined social phenomena as a set of interrelated components making up a complex whole. In the case of fashion, this meant examining the garments and elements of an outfit or a look that composed a vocabulary and a grammar (rather than reading off their external meanings).

Barthes' book has profoundly shaped recent fashion theory, although the book itself is often referred to rather than read since it is 'monumental but indigestible' (Louis-Jean Calvert quoted by Stafford 2006: 119) ...

Barthes makes a distinction between three kinds of garments - the real garment, the represented garment, and the used garment - corresponding to the processes of production, distribution and consumption. ...

... Barthes drew on the discipline of semiotics. Semiology is the science of forms or signs, and in the case of fashion, the forms relate to the garments, details, accessories, and modes of wearing clothes. If we conceive of the elements as signs, we can see how they compose a language of clothes ... and the clothed body of an individual constitutes a specific statement by way of the choice and arrangement of clothing. To understand this, we need to break down the idea of a sign into two components: the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the physical referent, while the signified is the mental concept implied by the signifier.

A pair of sunglasses signifies protective eyewear; however, sunglasses worn by a known criminal convey a special type of meaning; that is, they evoke images of gangsters and gangland warfare. Sunglasses worn by a celebrity are typically very large and very dressy, indicating both top-of-the-range tastes (conspicuous consumption) and a desire for anonymity (invisibility in the everyday world). A pair of boots may signify hardwearing footwear, but worn by a cowboy, they also indicate hard-living, adventurous, conservative masculinity. ...


One way to unpick our symbolic fashion systems is to examine fashion writings since these both rely on naturalised significations and connotations and create new ones and remind us of other ones. So, an article about a designer's reworking of the little black dress both draws on shared ... connotations of this garment and suggests new elements or elaborations of the connotations (or embedded meanings and symbolism) of it and how it might be reinterpreted. ...



This semiotic approach to fashion has the advantage of being able to analyse examples of fashion successes, phases, and trends and to make interpretations of particular garments, looks, and individual ways of composing a certain stylistic effect. Once regarded as a radical controversial approach, semiotics or the language of clothes was the dominant fashion theory of the late twentieth century. (Craik, 2009, pp.109-115).

REFERENCE

Craik, J. (2009) Fashion - the key concepts. Oxford: Berg.