44 The Language of Fashion
signifier both for the romantic air and for the dress to wear to
the casino. I am thus referred back to the context, be it a spatial one
(the phrasing or the entire item of clothing) or an associative one (the
oppositions between—‘s’ and no ‘s’, between, for example, organza
and flannel).
It would be better then to put the signifiers into homogenous
classifications, without worrying for the moment about their substance,
i.e. their signifieds: the signified will only come back into the picture
with the setting out of the relevant variations within each of these
classifications. What must be distinguished first are the main generic
‘morphemes’ of fashion clothing (for which I have reserved the middle
box in my diagram):^8 if I bring together all the signifiers of the type ‘satin’,
I will quickly find a general ‘vesteme’: material, inside which I hope
to open out, via a series of later studies, an actual paradigm (whose
‘number’ I cannot predict)^9 which will contrast in a pertinent way satin
with tweed ( morning).
- For it is the functions that I am trying to highlight. now, often
the fashion magazine only provides me with a univocal lexicon (what
I will call an absolute lexicon), inasmuch as it tends, thanks to its
mythological vocation, to present the signs as unchanging essences;
the magazine will tell me, for example, that alpaca means summer or
that lace means mystery, as if it were about ‘real’ eternal identities
whatever the general spread of other possible meanings: the more
arbitrary its law, the more imperative it is. But I would not be satisfied
with an absolute lexicon that did not allow me to find the signifying
oppositions. The stake is high, because if I am happy with simple
equations (alpaca summer), I will be induced to make the meaning
into a substance and to lose sight of the mythological aspect of the
signified; whereas, if I manage to disperse fashion’s absolute lexicon
across various ranges of relative oppositions, I am respecting the
dualized structure in fashion language, sending the signified back to
its mythological heaven. - Fortunately, however, the fashion magazine sometimes aban-
dons the absolute lexicon and itself provides various ranges of
oppositions that are all ready set out for me. This is true of what I will
call concomitant variations of signs: a change of signified explicitly
brings about a change of signifier, so that I then have at least four terms