The Fashion System [Paperback]

Roland Barthes (Author), Matthew Ward (Translator), Richard Howard (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 25, 1990 | ISBN-10: 0520071778 | ISBN-13: 978-0520071773

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."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

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Product Details

• Paperback: 351 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (July 25, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520071778
• ISBN-13: 978-0520071773
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #568,376 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an important book but hard to read, August 18, 2005

By 

textile fiend (Auckland, New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fashion System (Paperback)

I love fashion theory writings. I really do. And i know this is a seminal text in fashion theory. But man, oh man, is it a doozy! I'd give this book a 5 for the concepts, but a 1 for the ease of understanding. It is really hard to plough through - it is translated from French so features some tortuous sentence structure, and feels like the writings of a guy who really loves to read his own work; the higher the word count the better. I feel that it is work like this that leads people to view academic writing as necessarily dry, dense, verbose and pretentious, when there are amazing theory writers out there who are accessible and interesting to read.

OK, admittedly a lot of this style is because of the era in which it was written; maybe a little because of the gender of its writer, and a lot because of the complexity and originality of the ideas Barthe is illuminating. But I would strongly recommend leaving this book until graduate level. Undergrads are better off with any of the contemporary writers in fashion theory, gender or cultural studies who have addressed Barthe's ideas in simple language.

EDIT 9/17/2011 I've been meaning to update this review for a while now. Originally I gave this book 3 stars, however I was wrong. This is a 5-star book. All my criticisms in my original review really do nothing more than point out my own shortcomings in understanding it, and I'm sure that many people realised this when reading my review, and either forgave me for my ignorance, or thought "pfft, what an idiot". Fair enough. No, Barthes doesn't love his own work: he's enjoying the play of the text and letting us enjoy it too (hence the sentence structure). Yes, understanding Barthes fully can take time: totally worth the effort.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fashion Lovers MUST READ, December 13, 2009

By 

Timothy G. Souritzidis "TG" (NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Fashion System (Paperback)

For anyone interested in fashion (the real essence of fashion) you need to get this book. Being that I am a designer, I am using this book to fully understand the superficial meaning of clothing and fashion. I feel it is very good for people to understand not only what (art of fashion is) but also to understand how others perceive this (art)...This book does this very well. If you don't LOVE fashion and everything about it (ever the psychology of fashion) ...I don't recommend this book.

Barthes is the first (ever published) to really look at fashion with a semiotic approach.

12 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Center/Fold, June 12, 2000

By 

Carole A. Spann - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fashion System (Paperback)

For any reader who has had a father that read *Playboy* "for the articles," even Barthes' highly analytical approach to the relation between image and text--which he insists *produces* Fashion or "real clothing"--can be funny. I.e., reading in translation the American reader may not identify so much with the eccentricities of Barthes' style so much as his choice of subject. Barthes' work remains entirely relevant, even though the book was published in 1967--the decade where fashion models withered, along with any grand sense of ethics on the part of commercial artists, clothing designers, and filmmakers, down to nothing. Perhaps Barthes would say this Nothing was a *commentary.* Perhaps not. But certain details of Barthes' analysis hold very interesting still: for example, the fact that Barthes refers to the way the "written-garment" in a layout calls attention to specific portions of the "image-garment" as "amputations" (15).

For the reader, it's important to place the book into some sort of context, as Context is Barthes' entire position when he insists that in relation to popular imagery, text "arrests the level of reading at its fabric, at its belt, at the accessory which adorns it" (13). Barthes' idea that the language used by magazine writers does not comment upon but rather *creates* Fashion arouses some questions about certain social centerpieces in, for example, popular (once "folk") music: Janis Joplin to Madonna to Britney Spears. While Barthes clear interest is a structuralized definition of Fashion, not women, studying Barthes' book may help us understand at a more analytical level just what these women "mean" as they are mediated through imagery and arrested by their respective (worn and written) articles. Barthes is crucial for anybody who has ever noticed that, compared to that which accompanied artists of Joplin's caliber , the accompanying texts of contemporary magazines read, more often than not, like a report of Time Temperature and Date.

Furthermore, the book certainly becomes enjoyable for the more fantastic-minded who could envision a day when fashion magazines no longer have to rely on flamboyant nudity, tasteful or otherwise, or suggestive postures, but wherein nudity and erotic positions are implied in a truly Barthean, truly erotic manner: by the fact that all text has been stripped bare. After all, even in a picture-mag where there is no writing, there is still, if one reads Barthes, *writing*. This reviewer would imagine that in Barthes' eyes, the old fashioned critique of the ironic incongruities between the image and the text of other vestments of fashion (such as shampoo commercials whose orgiastic imagery and sounds have nothing to do with the actual product) could be easily solved by one magazine, of any kind, that had no writing at all but consisted entirely of centerfolds.