The Fashion System by Roland Barthes (Softcover)

Published by Hill and Wang, 1983
Perfect-bound softcover
303 pages
9x6 inches

Very good condition with light foxing to page edges. Binding tight.

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."