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The Contemporary Fashion System

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Bianca Terracciano
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 THE CONTEMPORARY FASHION SYSTEM

BIANCA TERRACCIANO

Why “contemporary”
When Roland Barthes wrote The Fashion System, he sought to analyze
the products of written civilization—fashion magazines, their photo
captions, as makers of social mythology and fashion sense. Fifty years on,
the written dress codes have changed—they do not hark back to the
memory of “teas at Juan-les-Pins”; they no longer offer clear expressions
of meaning. In fact, they list, in an almost mechanical way, meaningful
content (i.e. trench), materials (i.e. cotton), and brand (i.e. Burberry).
Visual texts have changed: they have passed from a “neat” representation
of dress, which is complete and detailed, to a syncretic photo requiring a
continuous interpretative effort, helped by the captions that become clues
to reconstructing shapes and labels. Sometimes the main subject is not the
model themself, but the scenery and its objects, which, for the most part,
do not communicate anything about the social background of the dress.
The discussion of fashion has found its way onto websites and social
networks, changing their communicative style. The present-day system of
fashion is different to that described by Barthes. It differs to previous
decades, too, and as such it is time to re-analyze it.
My purpose is to look at changes in the fashion system from Barthes
onwards, through an analysis of fashion magazines, websites, and blogs,
etc. The corpus of my research stretches from the 1960s to today.
The key concept in understanding the “new” fashion system is the
body—its changing proportions in fashion mirror the cultural and identity-
making metamorphoses of society. Studying fashion is not limited to
studying dresses. It involves examining the way they are worn, the ways
bodies are hidden or enhanced, and the movements, gestures and attitudes
typical of an age.
400 The Contemporary Fashion System

The supremacy of visual texts

My starting hypothesis is motivated by an assumption that images
introduce a surplus of meaning beyond the verbal text.
I base my reinterpretation of The Fashion System on the assumption
that garments may have meanings without textual description in their
visual aspects. Interpretation of that which is signified in the system/outfit
primarily relies on the visual text, while verbal texts are useful in
informing about the components of the system.
According to Barthes, human language underlies the meaning and the
word of fashion spreads it, establishing its reality. When speaking of
fashion, such a position remained valid until the late 1970s—the verbal
text dominated the visual. In contemporary society, fashion relies on visual
communication.
In my opinion, focusing on the semantics of written fashion, or
considering it as the primary pathway of meaning was, already at the time
of Barthes, insufficient to describe the system of fashion; this choice
originated from Barthes’ methodological and disciplinary orientation and
due to the poorly developed visual semiotics of the time.
In the corpus analyzed in my doctoral thesis (Terracciano 2013), which
included magazines published from the 1960s onwards and web-based
materials, I noticed that fashion is not subject to sudden extreme changes,
but the lines and silhouettes of reference remain the same in the long- or
mid-term and are manipulated to construct a given axiologic structure.
This is not a simple process of stereotyping, but of image construction
practices aimed at the /having-to-be/ of a body in a culture.
The changes to styles and silhouettes happen gradually, starting from
the introduction of minor differences that go almost unnoticed at the
beginning.
What creates semioticity and meaning is the constant presence of an
audience to be engaged—fashion has to hit, to explode, and to dynamize
motionless daily spheres and to assert its creativity.
The images of fashion have the task of educating the reader, especially
from the point of view of new and pleasing visual forms.
Firstly, people cry abomination, then they start to be convinced by the
authoritativeness of fashion. In this case Barthes is right when saying that
fashion magazines are surrounded by an aura of sacredness.
According to Barthes, verbal text helps the reader to grasp the essence
of garments by making “discrete” concepts concrete, and “it endows the
garment with a system of functional oppositions (for example,
fantasy/classic), which the real or photographed garment is not able to
 Bianca Terracciano 401

manifest in as clear a manner” (Barthes 1967, 14). Barthes considered the

real or photographed garment to be a poor medium for the transfer of
meaning, but I believe that it more effectively expresses information on
the alternation of variants and invariants in fashion, on characteristic
features of periods and styles, and on taxonomies of the relationship
between the body and the garment.
With the passing of time, the verbal text of the fashion shoot has
become reduced, sometimes almost nonexistent, emphasizing the impact
of the visual text.
The verbal text of journals, as well as their artistic license, have lead to
virtuous circles of knowledge about the system of fashion and has created
a crowd of well informed and educated fashion consumers. Visual texts,
except in some cases like Vogue that used artistic photos, in Barthes’
image corpus were too simple, with poses and locations that could not
match the emphatic syntax of their verbal counterparts and the meaning
they generated. Furthermore, the images could mislead the naive reader,
who ran the risk of misinterpreting the message conveyed.
According to Barthes, the function of language not only gives
information on materials and on particular “fashion changes,” but
invigorates “certain vestimentary features,” based on aesthetic values and
usually to direct the reading of an image as if it were an itinerary: “the
proper aim of description is to direct the immediate and diffuse knowledge
of image-clothing through a mediated and specific knowledge of Fashion”
(Barthes 1967, 17).
For Barthes, the written garment is meaningful because it does not
involve any “noise”: it is an abstract garment rendered concrete through
words.
The signifiers of fashion are dominated by this model. Through images
“fashion keeps its distance with regard to its own lexicon” (Barthes 1967,
303) by triggering a process of apparent falsification of meaning to
generate its signifier. In other words, everything that is not fashion is a
surplus of meaning because it is part of a signified world; but the pictures
show exaggerated and fictional scenes in which the only real and plausible
element is the garment. The garments worn by the models are influenced
by their bodily individuality, which affects the institutional value of
fashion, dissolving the main objective of the communicative contract.
In this regard, Barthes distinguishes between the real garment, that is
the structural institutional form of the garment corresponding to a
formulation in line with Saussurean language, and the used garment, the
dress that is actualized, individualized, and worn, which is associated to
speech.
402 The Contemporary Fashion System

The institutional figure of the cover-girl is an embodiment of fashion

and becomes a secondary emphatic meaning: only the verbal text can
concretize the abstract. Barthes’ position is anachronistic because in the
contemporary age, what is more important is fashion worn by famous
people, which, thanks to them, contributes to actualize what is in vogue
and what others would like to wear. Barthes contradicts himself because
the showing of the “garment in act” corresponds to the garment that is
worn: the photo set is unreal, given the situation, but these elements are
equivalent to a verbal text. The statement “prints are winning at the races”
combines with the visual text showing a model at the races to indicate the
meaning and to produce incisive, meaningful impact. The pose can be
exaggerated and not canonical, but it also derives from the nature of the
dress.

The body as signified

In “The body as signified” (Barthes 1967, 260), Barthes starts from
Hegel in referring to an assumption that considers the body as pure
sentience, and therefore incapable of meaning—it is only thanks to the
garment that it makes itself meaningful. Hegel considers clothes as an
instrument to overcome shame and above all to resolve the issues of
“spirit” and “body”: that which is signified resides in the freedom of
expression of the spirit, or subjectivity, while the body coincides with the
“inertia of the flesh” (Galimberti 1993, 202, my translation) and then
structures its relationship with the world on shame.
This is a Judeo-Christian perspective that sees the dress as divine
punishment penalizing original sin, but it may also apply in a society
where dressing oneself concerns strategies of appearance, the negotiation
of identity, and the expression of social differences between individuals.
Hegel’s scholastic legacy privileges the “hiding” over the “showing” that
is, in my opinion, the true purpose of fashion—it provides valuable tools
for humans to adapt their bodies to the world and its events. On the other
hand, “by varying the garment to the body, wearing it makes the world
change” (Galimberti 1993, 203). This coincides with the “youthquake” of
the 1960s and the hippy movement of the 1970s, or even the power suit of
the 1980s; clothing and outfits have characterized social revolutions and
body patterns with impacts on dietary habits and body care. Certainly, the
fashion system has contributed to making local cultures poorer by taking
the place of ethnic fashion systems, but it has also meant that, due to
creolization of elements of other cultures, different semiospheres meet and
coexist in different collections. Returning to Barthes, the question on
 Bianca Terracciano 403

“which body is the fashion garment to signify” (Barthes 1967, 258) is

meaningful—he repeats the problem of the relationship between Language
and Speech and that the institution can be contaminated by the
individuality of the “garment in act.” At first glance, everything can be
solved in the institutional body of the cover-girl, which can never become
a formal structure, leaving the garment to express meaning in visual texts
“in situation”—as such “the event threatens the structure” (Barthes 1967,
259). Barthes insists on the issue event/structure as referring to
“fashionable bodies” in a given period of time and to the impact of
clothing on the volumes of the body scheme.
In my opinion, the cover-girl, seen as a discursive configuration of
“somatic behavior” (Greimas and Courtés 1979, 118), is apparent because
as much it may be de-individualized it remains the subject of an action. In
addition, the cover-girl coincides with the fashionable body, as an
institution, and in her case the structure corresponds to the event. Besides,
the fashionable body is inextricably bound to the body transformed by
garments. Structure and event do not have to be opposed because only
their union creates meaning. Certainly, not all bodies will be fashionable
or transformed, but, in one way or another, fashion exercises an unlimited
power in signification.
The obsession with a fashionable body is justified by the hegemony of
visual texts dominated by the cover-girl and by the vast numbers of
articles and tutorials, off and online, and TV shows like Ma come ti
vesti?!. These have developed the relationship between the fashionable
body and transformed body in the firmest terms of agreement with the
enunciatee. The body manifests its intentions and reflects the Zeitgeist
through the garment.
The body sets up a level of expression (Violi 2008, 107) and therefore
it renders as necessary a series of gestures, movements, postures, facial
expressions, and glances, and considers them as elements of the level of
expression by assigning them signified meanings. The body is both the
operator and formulator of this level of expression and acts in
intersubjective space. The body spreads its signified meanings and
increases their comprehension, setting up a climate of interaction.
According to Patrizia Violi this is “the totality of an enuncianting body
that is directly in charge of passionate enunciation” (2008, 109, my
translation). The body is not only a logical operator of transformation, nor
a discursive figure, but its role in the process of the production of meaning
is set in discursive practices and cultures that define it according to the
complex configurations of meaning that the body produces in discourse.
The poses and postures of the models are, therefore, figurative canons
404 The Contemporary Fashion System

semanticizing the dresses worn; they facilitate a passage from praxis to

gestural communication that establishes symbolic or semi-symbolic
relationships between expression and the content of gestural
communication to produce meaning. Gestural expressiveness, as social
gesture, is endowed with a capacity to modalize bodies and dresses. Each
pose assumes a different rhetorical function according to the context of the
image, the typology of the dress, and the historical moment. Every
movement of the body or expression of the face expresses the contract set
up between the enunciator and enunciatee and of their passionate
trajectory. Poses can express messages towards an addressee or internal
emotional states that render meaningful fashion and its contexts of use.
Gestural signification spreads emotional meanings that are understood
thanks to a reciprocity between the one gesturing and the one interpreting
it:

“What matters is how people of different cultures make use of their bodies,
of the very wide range of psychosomatic possibilities that they offer to
shape, emotionally, their bodies and their world. ... it is the human body
itself that performs a sort of act of transcendence, evident in the figurative
meaning that physical gestures, including voice, can take. In order to
express this, the body must ultimately become the thought or intention that
it signifies to us. Then, it is the body that shows; it is the body that speaks”
(Pezzini 2007, 90–92, my translation).

Poses and gestures are a simulacrum of face to face communication, of

a hic et nunc, and of the context and situation of use: the bodies of models
show what dresses signify and transmits what one feels in relation to them.
Gestural expressiveness represented in fashion reportage has a
fundamentally rhetorical role in the persuasive communication of texts; it
ensures a passionate engagement between addresser and addressee.
Gestures and poses are correlated to the typology of the dress, its
functionality, and its aesthetic improvement, contributing to an
enhancement of the morphological relationship between dress and
conveying the meaning of this to the enunciatee.
There are collections of female poses that models and photographers
must know how to master to give value to a dress and magnify its
qualities. Poses are useful in emphasizing the physical characteristics of
the models and minimizing their defects. A photo-shoot is constructed
according to a product or one of its details, and the model’s pose conveys
the enunciatee’s eyes towards what they wish to promote. The model’s
pose is never left to chance, nor is her position, lighting, make up and hair
styling. Fashion reportage is not a simple accompaniment to a visual text,
 Bianca Terracciano 405

or an essential recording of the garments being worn, but a declaration of a

determined state of things, of its axiologies and, above all, it is
enunciation. The traits of the photo-shoot relate to the dresses, accessories,
and backgrounds, both from a plastic and a figurative point of view.
During the shooting process, the photographer foreshadows the context of
how the images will be used; as the Western reader orientates their visual
field from left to right, the photographer will start looking at the photo
from the bottom left, and then directing their attention towards the most
luminous element of the image—the area in which contrast is greatest
(Peagram 2008, 17).
The composition of lines, shapes, colors and tones must be projected
according to this aim so as to regulate the enunciatee’s trajectory of
enunciation. The phtographer directs their visual field utilizing the position
of the model’s body as a compass, now following the line of a leg, passing
across her body and reaching her head, or starting from her trunk and then
sliding across to her hand that holds a Croco hobo-bag. The elements that
guide the enunciatee’s eyes include: lines; curves; composition;
perspective; and colors. Straight lines organize the picture and are used to
give an imperious atmosphere. Diagonals carry dynamism, while vertical
and horizontal lines are used to give the image solidity, which is often in
opposition to curves. The curved lines connote elegance and softness and
can follow the shape of a “C” or “S”: the body assumes the “C” shape
when lying down and relaxed; the “S” curve is considered as the female
body’s most pleasing, offering an air of sensuality. One should highlight
the existence of a pre-arranged set of poses for fashion images and point
out the correlation between each pose and type of dress, presuming that
the postures and the direction of body—front, profile, back—are chosen
according to the type of clothing.
In this regard, we must consider that the clothes have a direct physical
link to the body. Length, volume, and amplitude all depend on the course
of seasons and collections, and on the physical contact established
between body and garment. Moreover, the garments modalize those who
wear them according to a /being-able-to-be/being-able-to-do/ frame—the
meaning in which I intend to frame the stylistic revolution of the 1960s
that affirmed a new culture of the individual and the body.
The body parts uncovered by this liberation were the breast, waist and
hip. The breast was trapped in constrictive bras and in ready-to-wear
jackets with lines that ill-fitted many body types. The waist was liberated
from the “trapezoid” line and legs were uncovered by miniskirts.
The change in the silhouette, the supporting points of clothes, and of
body parts covered/uncovered coincided with the phenomenon defined by
406 The Contemporary Fashion System

Vogue as a “youthquake,” which, with juvenile protest, contributed to a

consideration of the body liberated from constraints and a need for
harmony between body shapes and garment lines. The revolution of the
body changed the style of visual rhetoric of the magazines of the 1960s,
which went from written and mannequin fashion to that of prêt-a-porter.
I would like to offer, as a solution to Barthes’ question, the body
according to the fashion of the collections in the period 2011–2013 and the
many references to the styles of the 1920s and 1930s, reinvigorated
because they have in common with the contemporary age a historical
background of global economic crisis. Regarding 1920s style, I wish to
cite the a la garçonne style; in contrast, the 1930s reiterated a length
below the knees, padding on the shoulders, and inserts in fur (nowadays
often in faux fur). Fashion captures the demands of the context, it is not
always arbitrary in choosing the ideal silhouette and its imperious will is
softened by the skin in which it lives.
The fashionable body incorporates the concepts of “being of fashion”
and “being fashionable,” describable as the difference between being and
Dasein in Heidegger. The first being is intended as a transcendental a
priori to which we tend, and which is established and legislated, while
Dasein describes a possibility, a search for a way to be fashionable. Being
fashionable is to seek signified meanings and take possession of their
contents; it represents a passion that is expressed and asserts itself
figuratively as a way of being; the being of fashion “does not belong to the
signifier, but to the signified, to be before there is, before it finds its
appearance, its territoriality, its there-being. Fashion is the effect of an
inner cause, it is the only content that is given to us to touch—coming into
the open—from the inside of our emotions” (Abruzzese 2011, 55, my
translation).
The fashionable body becomes a sociable body because its shape is
built by the “scientific community” of reference, according to Thomas
Kuhn, and only its contract establishes a given form of the body; in the
case of the fashion system, this is represented by the changing of seasons
and times.
This is not the place to make value judgments on the appropriateness
of somatic imperatives, the only thing I can say is that “designing” and
divulging a given form of the human body does not mean engaging in
morphological terrorism, but committing a creative act that derives from a
current of thought defined by a given time period. It is the enunciatee who
comes to a conclusion and decides whether to set a constitutive
relationship with the body-agent.
 Bianca Terracciano 407

The contemporary fashion system has undergone radical changes with

the rise of e-commerce and social networks, like Instagram, that, in turn,
have also influenced the enunciative style of the fashion press. The traits
and motifs of the fashion system are enclosed in visual texts that have
made the representation of being-in-fashion visible and accessible to
everyone, tying the signification of the fashionable body and its
production of meaning to an exponential sharing via social networks that
ensures the effectiveness of its contents and the perpetuation of a new
genre of fashion discourse. Fashion images are now the best way to
communicate the fashion-body: they infuse audiences and are the real base
of the contemporary fashion system.

Bibliography
Barthes, Roland. 1990. The Fashion System. Translated by Matthew Ward
and Richard Howard. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press.
Galimberti, Umberto. 1993. Il corpo. Milano: Feltrinelli.
Greimas, Algirdas, and Joseph Courtés. 1979. Sémiotique. Dictionnaire
raisonné de la théorie du langage. Paris: Hachette.
Peagram, Billy. 2008. Posing Techniques for Photographing Model
Portfolios. Buffalo: Amherst Media.
Pezzini, Isabella. 2007. Il testo galeotto. La lettura come pratica efficace.
Roma: Meltemi.
Terracciano, Bianca. 2013. “Dai corpi sociali ai corpi mediali. La moda
1960-2012”. PhD diss., SUM, University of Bologna.
Violi, Maria Patrizia. 2008. “Corporeità e sostanza vocale
nell’enunciazione in atto”. Versus 106: 105-119.

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