The Fashion System - Softcover

Barthes, Roland; Howard, Richard; Ward, Matthew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520071778 ISBN 13: 9780520071773

Publisher: University of California Press, 1990

Synopsis

In 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."

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The object of this inquiry is the structural analysis of women's clothing as currently described by Fashion magazines: its method was originally inspired by the general science of signs postulated by Saussure under the name semiology.

About the Author:

Roland Barthes was born in 1915 and studied French literature and classics at the University of Paris. After teaching French at universities in Romania and Egypt, he joined the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, where he devoted himself to research in sociology and lexicology. He was a professor of the Collège de France until his death in 1980.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0520071778
• ISBN 13: 9780520071773
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 351