52 The Language of Fashion
8 For these vestimentary morphemes I propose the noun ‘vestemes’, by
analogy to Claude Lévi-Strauss’s ‘mythemes’.
9 not having yet completed the inventory of oppositions, I still do not know if
these are binary or complex.
10 Proportionality is a notion which is not very compatible with the
discontinuous nature of signifiers; but the signifieds, for their part, are
often quantified: ensembles that are more or less smart, more and more
fantasy, etc.
11 The way of wearing an item can be put on a structural inventory only
if this way of wearing is institutionalized: here we have the Saussurian
distinction between langue and parole; just as linguistics is interested only
in phenomena of langue, so a semiology of clothing only retains normative
features. and indeed fashion clothing has the methodological advantage
of being institutional clothing in its pure state—because it is not worn.
12 We can already predict a neutral term for this opposition (neither open,
nor fastened), which (on certain overcoats) is edge to edge [bord à bord].
But since the edge to edge is found in the opposition edge to edge
wrapped around, we would then have a function with four terms: wrapped
around/fastened/open/edge to edge.
13 To what extent is green the opposite of red? one might say that the
existence of a third term or neutral term (neither red, nor green) reinforces
the polarity between the first two.
14 The link between the technical matrices of clothing and the organization of
its signifiers goes back to the problem set out in note 7 above.
15 There would be some interest in comparing how a catalogue for a large
store organizes the fashion signifiers and the classification of articles
for clothing. The problem of these taxonomies has been taken up by
mandelbrot (Logique, langage et théorie de l’information, Paris, PuF,
1957, p. 57) following George Kingsley Zipf, Human Behaviour and the
Principle of Least Effort, Cambridge, mass., addison Wesley editions,
1949 and Gustav herdan, Language as Choice and Change, Groningen,
P. noordhof n.v., 1956.
16 The criterion point of support with which to define an item comes from
ethnology (andré Leroi-Gourhan, Milieu et techniques, p. 208 [see also
note 6 in chapter 3 here, ‘Towards Sociology of Dress’]). This does not
stop it coinciding with the criterion of meaning, except for a few things that
are limited to Western clothing.
17 on the level of item we could suggest an opposition: presence, absence.
Let ‘E’ be the item for the shoulders; in certain conditions ‘E ’ (women)
‘E–’ (men).
18 one of the difficulties in the structural analysis of clothing is its two-
dimensional nature. Clothing items are to be found on both the horizontal