The Language of Fashion - Softcover

'It is the making of symbols that both enlightens and disturbs and in many ways this collection opens our eyes to the fashion myth - without destroying one of the most compelling of social fantasies.'Financial Times'For Barthes, words and objects have in common the organized capacity to say something; at the same time, since they are signs, words and objects have the bad faith always to appear natural to their consumer, as if what they say is eternal, true, necessary, instead of arbitrary, made, contingent.'Edward Said'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. One is able to hear the voice of a sensitive and sensible critic who was alive to the symbolic vitality of the world.'New York Times'..the great student of signs'Edmund White'..a wily observer of 'naturalness' and the 'falsely obvious.' A vivid polemicist, Barthes has something too of the c

Roland Barthes, widely regarded as one of the most subtle and perceptive critics of the 20th Century, was particularly fascinated by fashion and clothing. The Language of Fashion brings together all Barthes' untranslated writings on fashion.The Language of Fashion presents a set of remarkable essays, revealing the breadth and insight of Barthes' long engagement with the history of clothes. The essays range from closely argued essays laying down the foundations for a structural and semiological analysis of clothing to a critical analysis of the significance of gemstones and jewellery, from an exploration of how the contrasting styles of Courrges and Chanel replayed the clash between ancient and modern to a discussion of the meaning of hippy style in Morocco, and from the nature of desire to the role of the dandy and colour in fashion.Constantly questioning, always changing, Barthes' ideas about clothes and fashion remain to provoke another generation of readers seeking to understand not only the culture of fashion but the fashion of culture.