History and Sociology of Clothing 11corresponding to an organism and the system (a whole type of garments)
to a species.^24 In fact, the problem cannot be resolved so long as the
system has not been defined according to internal criteria, something
that histories of dress have not yet done. Linguistics, for its part, is
in the process of working to clarify the links between synchrony and
diachrony, without yet succeeding; in other words, the science of dress,
which has as yet to be constituted, has so far not carefully examined
the data. But by looking to the example of linguistics we are able to
suggest two methodological caveats—historical and sociological—to
guide us towards a definitive explanation. We must first agree to make
the notion of system more flexible, that is to think of structures in terms
of tendencies rather than perhaps in terms of a rigid equilibrium. Clothes
live in tight symbiosis with their historical context, much more so than
language; violent historical episodes (wars, exoduses, revolutions) can
rapidly smash a system; but also, in contrast to language, the recasting
of the system is much quicker. however, it would not be desirable,
at this point, to reintroduce, into the flux of vestimentary forms, any
external determinisms before having identified all of the internal factors
that, within the system itself, play at least a part in its evolution.^25
Signifier and signified
as we know, Saussure posited a science of meanings under the name
of semiology, of which linguistic semantics would be but a part. It goes
without saying that dress—which cannot be reduced to its protective
or ornamental function—is a privileged semiological field: one could say
that it is the signifying function of dress which makes it a total social
object. Drawing on the observations on the sign made by Ignace
meyerson,^26 let us distinguish, for dress, between indexical objects and
signifying or notifying ones:
Indices The index operates outside of any intention of directed
behaviour. The link that many histories have established between dress
and the ‘spirit’ of an age would be part of the indexical, if such a link
could be proven to have any scientific power which is, as yet, far from
being the case. We find more reliable indexical objects in studies by a