The Fashion System

Browse Return to Previous Page       Related Subjects All Subjects French Stuff Literary Studies Literary Studies MOSTLY Theory

by Roland Barthes,

Translated by Matthew Ward and Richard Howard

University of California Press

Due/Published July 1990, 351 pages, paper

ISBN 0520071778

Reissued

"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."

"Barthes's treatment of fashion in The Fashion System is his most elaborate attempt to reveal the little worlds of meaning enclosed in each nuance of social life. . . . In a magisterial effort that has been superbly translated by Matthew Ward and Richard Howard, Barthes certainly draws our attention to some fascinating aspects of fashion. . . . One is able to hear the voice of a sensitive and sensible critic who was alive to the symbolic vitality of the world."--Flint Schier, New York Times Book Review