The Fashion System

The Fashion System by Howard, Richard. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780520071773.

In his consideration of the language of the fashion magazine―the structural analysis of descriptions of womens 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 dont calculate; if clothings producers and consumers had the same consciousness, clothing would be bought (and produced) only at the very slow rate of its dilapidation."