• DOI:10.5040/9781350091948.ch-002
• Corpus ID: 106435607

The Fashion System

@inproceedings{Barthes1983TheFS,
  title={The Fashion System},
  author={Roland Barthes and Matthew Ward and Richard Howard},
  year={1983}
}

• R. Barthes, M. Ward, Richard Howard
• Published 1 July 1983
• Art

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."