Roland Barthes

Looking at different subculture and how it relates to fashion and how advertising influences it. I thought this post from my fashion brief shows how it all links to how subcultures use their fashion.

People use fashion as a way of communicating and learning about semiotics (the study of signs) in a lecture has help me to understand the importance of this when looking into fashion, subcultures and photography because it plays an important role.

Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician of the 20^th century. His book The Fashion System is about the specific language women’s magazines had developed. He was trying to prove that the somehow “scientific” semiology could be used to analyse everything, including Elle,Vogue, or Marie-Claire.  

He analyzes the ideas and ideologies that are transmitted through clothing. The basic terms he uses are: signified, signifier, sign, and sign system. 

The signifier is the idea or the concept that is attached to a particular The sign itself for example the garment.

Signified what it stands for words, drawings and sounds. This is split into two

Connotative: Points to the signified but has a deeper meaning.

Denotative: What the signified actually is, quite like a definition,

Semiotics gives more power over the viewer.

Fashion photography is about the reality and illusion of garments and of bodies and clothing is another form of communication.

Barthes identifies 3 common strategies in fashion photography.

1. literal representation: the catalogue shot displaying the garment
   
   
   
   
   
   Tom Kublin, Balenciaga, 1953
2. romanticized: fashion becomes referential in a story where real life becomes art by acting out dreams
   
   
   
                                                                      Chris Von Wangenheim, Vogue, 197
   
   

3. mockery: a model in an outrageous situation using unreal juxtapositions, unlike the previous there is no reality turned dream but simply total absurdity
   
   
   
   
   
   John Rawlings, Vogue, 1954
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Poison by Christian Dior, advert is a good example of using semiotics. When people look at this advert they sense that they are buying a dangerous, but alluring, love potion. The symbols such as the poison fruit/berries,snake and red apple are all associated with danger.

I think this all relates to how people in different subcultures use the way they dress as symbols to communicate and to express themselves