Roland Barthes of France applied semiology, the study of signs and symbols, to literary and social criticism.
Ideas of Roland Gérard Barthes, a theorist, philosopher, and linguist, explored a diverse range of fields. He influenced the development of schools of theory, including design, anthropology, and poststructuralism.
I have no idea why nobody reads barthes anymore in anthropology. He's prettier than Foucault, less obtuse than Levi-Strauss and more current than Benjamin.
I might one day teach this in a course on ethnographic method, if only to piss off the students.
Thesis: Whatever fashion photography is, it is not the article of clothing. Whatever fashion writing is, it is neither the article of clothing nor the photograph. What, then, is description?
A totally insane, wacky, uber-smart, poetic, at times hard to read, incredibly beautiful, slightly eccentric reading of the world of fashion through the eyes of one of the great readers as well as writer Roland Barthes. I want to give this book five stars, but four makes it more mysterious for some reason or another. Yet probably the best book that tells you how to read inbetween the words and 'image' of fashion.
"Fashion is both too serious and too frivolous at the same time, and it is in this intentionally complementary interplay of excess that it finds a solution to a fundamental contradiction which constantly threatens to destroy its fragile prestige: in point of fact, Fashion cannot be literally serious, for that would be to oppose common sense ( of which it is respectful on principle), which easily deems Fashion's activity idle; conversely, Fashion cannot be ironic and put its own being in question; a garment must remain, in its own language, both essential (it gives Fashion life) and accessory (common sense considers it thus); whence a rhetoric which is sometimes sublime, giving Fashion the security of an entirely nominal culture, sometimes familiar, shifting the garment to a universe of "little things." Moreover, it is probable that the juxtaposition of the excessively serious and the excessively frivolous, which is the basis for the rhetoric of Fashion, merely reproduces, on the level of clothing, the mythic situation of Women in Western civilization, at once sublime and childlike."
I read this while doing research for my senior thesis and the arguments and ideas are thoughtful and insightful. My only issue with it is that it's almost impenetrable to anyone who might want to understand the ideas presented withouth having advanced degrees. I know plenty of people who would love this book but I wouldn't recommend it because I think it's a tough read. Well worth it if you can get through it, but to an average person who might actually enjoy it, it's a struggle.
LOVE LOVE LOVE! It has a dry technicality that gives it an odd beauty. Much of the same meditations on surfaces, voids, and writing as in "Mythologies," but fewer exclamation points and more to the point. Oh, and it's also all about clothes.
Roland Barthes foi um dos primeiros acadêmicos a dar atenção à moda de forma de pesquisa ainda nos anos 1960, quando muitos de seus pares na academia consideravam esse um assunto frívolo e que não deveria ou precisava ser estudado. Barthes estabelece todo um sistema da moda, nomeando os mais diversos atravessamentos que a moda pode tomar. Contudo, o estudioso francês pensa a moda, neste livro, como algo relacionado principalmente com a confecção e com o vestuário, restringindo assim, estudos mais extensivos sobre moda e tendências em outras áreas. Penso que a parte mais estruturalista do livro não tem mais tanta reverberação na atualidade, embora alguns poucos sistemas pode ser aplicados hoje em dia. Para mim, a parte mais interessante do livro é que relaciona a moda com o funcionamento do mundo da humanidade e com a sociedade, que analisa mais a fundo o fenômeno dos seres humanos serem tão influenciado pelo que é novo e pela ordem das mudanças atrás de mudanças que a moda implica. Assim, o Sistema da Moda, tem partes atuais e bastante "in" e partes "fora de moda", "demodê".
Une toile discursive qui existe par et pour elle-même. Roland Barthes livre ici une théorie absconse et sans intérêt pratique : au-delà du jeu de signes qu'il se plaît à construire, il n'apporte aucun éclairage concret à notre rapport à la mode. Comme il le dit lui-même, il ne s'agit nullement d'adopter une démarche sociologique, c'est-à-dire de dire quelque chose du réel.
Un classico libro sulla moda. Molto tecnico, in alcuni punti, specialistico. Ma un utile strumento per barcamenarsi in un mondo che è tutt'altro che frivolo
It doesn't matter how many times you read this book, it'll always be difficult. Whether it's for the writing, or for the ideas. It feels a bit outdated, obviously, but it's definitely a must-read for fashion students.
Est ce que je suis morte ? Non, mais j'aurais pu mourir. Non, je rigole, c'était bien mieux que ce que j'aurais pu le devine, et bien plus compréhensible que Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes
Using French fashion magazines from 1958 and 1959 as his source material, Barthes reads clothing to determine its system of meaning. His proclamation that "The magazine as a machine that makes fashion" (51) is indisputable now (and was it ever in doubt by those in the industry?), but in 1967 when this book was first published it had a whiff of revolution. Dense and specialized reading, however, as we are not in too many pages before the language reaches doctoral-level semiology. What else would you expect from the founder of the study of signs? So this is a highly specialized text and difficult reading for non-specialists. It does contain a neat refutation of the arbitrariness of the sign, which was one of Saussure's fundamental points, while at the same time pointing out that the Fashion sign is arbitrary because it is "exempt from time: Fashion does not evolve, it changes; its lexicon is new each year, like that of a language which always keeps the same system but suddenly and regularly changes the 'currency' of its words." (215). To get Barthes point: What does "short skirt" mean this year?
Semiotics is dry but the rewards of this book were seeing this long strong theory elaborated then put into praxis in some of these punchy little essays for Marie Claire etc. Barthes arguments on the dandy as an ephemeral moment - destroyed - by fashion are pretty apt and hearing him take down hippies as a result of all this work was perhaps a delight. Definitely the essay 'From Gemstones to Jewellery' was the most insightful for me and I think incapsulates all this work about meaning in clothing in this fascinating way that is able to incorporate magic and lore into an otherwise cold (pitiless, like stone) sort of argument.
On peut se demander pourquoi s’infliger aujourd’hui la lecture du charabia structuraliste de Barthes...
Et pourtant, dans la folie de son projet d'analyse du langage des magazines de mode et dans la folle rigueur analytique de Barthes, il y a un rappel fascinant à l’ère de l’intelligence artificielle: les combinaisons d’un type de langage ne sont pas infinies, et le sens se cache justement dans le choix et l’arrangement de combinaisons finies.
Ce que Barthes nous enseigne avant l’heure, c’est de savoir détecter, analyser et comprendre ce non-dit. En somme, à se défendre contre les algorithmes qui renforcent sans la comprendre l’idéologie qui les sous-tend. Pénible mais fascinant.
Pas mon préféré de Barthes. Mais ça reste Barthes, sa clairvoyance excessive, presque maladive. Esprit de système et œil perçant. La mode est le cadet de mes soucis, mais m'intéresse la manière dont on en parle et ce qu'elle révèle éventuellement. Malheureusement, je trouve que le système d'analyse construit par Barthes et son architecture complexes ne sont pas des plus féconds, et que ses analyses les plus passionnantes sont toujours les plus dilettantes. Plutôt le Barthes badin des Mythologies que celui des tableaux de linguistique, en somme.
WARNING. I'v read The Fashion System and thought The Language of Fashion was just an updated version of it (Barthes uses the terms langue and system interexchangably, and language seems to me like a nicer term). ERROR; they're two different books or rather The Fashion System is a book and The Language of Fashion seems to be a collection of essays. Sigh. As if Barthes wasn't confusing enough. Brilliant, but also French.
Apesar de ser considerado, por ser um conjunto de textos no formato de coletânea do que não foi organizado pelo autor em vida, são ensaios sobre moda, imagem (cinema, publicidade) que indico aos amigos que querem entender como ler o que está acontecendo no mundo agora. Leitura deliciosa.
strange and difficult to read... a nice attempt at explaining fashion that I personaly found unsuccesful. A must-read anyway for all fashion designers.