‘Blue is in Fashion This Year’ 49with a hip item (skirt or trousers); and it is a systemic unit in that it is
in opposition to another shoulder item, of a similar sort, such as the
car coat.^19 So the ‘vesteme’ always has a double existence: extensive,
because it is provided with a concrete (topological) situation; intensive,
because it sits at the top of a virtual paradigm of oppositions.
- The signs I have discussed so far all link to a specific signified:
and this is even, I have suggested, to the advantage of fashion clothing
in that it supplies its signifieds in the meta-language of a literature.
These signifieds are not great in number, and the world they construct
is narrow.^20 however, even if we remember that a signified has almost
always several signifiers, fashion clothing gives the impression of a
surprising flourishing of forms. how can this be?
here we need to consider a whole set of features for which the
fashion magazine does not give the signified, or at least to which it does
not attribute an explicit signified: the signified remains, so to speak,
‘up in the air’. For example, the simple overall dress will be described
to us using a succession of its features (poplin with white polka dot on
Pernod-yellow background, pleated collar and pockets, etc.), without
these features referring to any declared concept: the signified seems
to be defective. But this is only in appearance: in all of the cases where
the magazine describes without commenting, of which there are many,
there is always a signified which needs to be added, and this signified is
fashion itself;^21 to the extent that these apparently defective equations
are full meanings: nothing of what is said is insignificant.
Fashion then is a signified like all the others. The only difference is
that the other signifieds are episodic and always named. The signified
fashion is by contrast permanent—it can be found in three forms:
explicitly named (blue is in fashion this year); supported by contingent
signifieds which make up its links (accessory spring { fashion});^22 or
neither named, nor linked, but implicit (a dress in Pernod poplin, etc.).
It is a universal signified; one could say, to borrow the expression from
logic,^23 that in all equations of vestimentary language, whether implicit
or not, fashion constitutes the vector continuum of meaning. - It follows then, that in literary terms, it is within this written meta-
language that the fashion magazine supplies its equivalences, and that
the signified fashion is supplied using a single signifier, which, both
necessary and sufficient, I will call the notable: any noted feature, any
underlined form, in short any vestimentary fragment points, as soon as