The Invisible Manmagazines to derive its influential ideas about communication. Barthes argues
that systematic analysis of ‘real garments’ would necessitate working back
to the actions governing their manufacture. Describing the structure of real
clothing as ‘technological’ he correctly concedes that its study lies outside
the scope of his theory.^19 And yet this is precisely what the student of fashion
would like to know about.
ApologiesIt is fairly safe to assume that a student or practitioner of fashion has selected
the area because he or she believes it to be worthwhile and rewarding, if not
in every aspect, at least in part. One might challenge the political, ethical or
moral structure of the industry, but in continuing his or her study or practice,
would presumably have a vision of some alternative model. No one working
within the discipline in a practical capacity would expect to have to
continually justify being there. But it seems that writers on fashion cannot,
or at least have not, been able to enjoy such security. Elizabeth Wilson has
explained that ‘because fashion is constantly denigrated, the serious study of
fashion has had to repeatedly justify itself. Almost every fashion writer,
whether journalist or art historian, insists anew on the importance of fashion
both as a cultural barometer and as an expressive art form’.^20
In her introduction to the inaugural issue of Fashion Theory Valerie Steele
refers to an article she had written several years previously, entitled the ‘F
word’. Describing the position of fashion within academia at that time she
says, ‘It was not a pretty picture.’ Fashion was regarded as ‘frivolous, sexist,
bourgeois, “material” (not intellectual) and therefore beneath contempt’.
Happily, she reports that by the time of the launch of Fashion Theory, the
subject had begun to receive attention ‘from artists and intellectuals alike’.^21
No matter how dramatic the change in attitude though, traces of the former
ambivalence about fashion remain in extant tests still consulted by students.
Many carry the defensive, quasi apologetic tone described by Wilson, some
a loftiness which hints at the author’s desire to be regarded as superior to
the subject, and some the undisguised hostility described below.
The upturn in the academic fortunes of fashion welcomed by Steele, its
newly acquired attractiveness to ‘artists and intellectuals’, has had a further
- Barthes, R., translated from the French by Matthew Ward and Richard Howard, London:
Cape, 1985, p. 5. - Wilson, E., Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, London: Virago, 1985, p. 47.
- Steele, V., ‘Letter from the Editor’,Fashion Theory, vo1, issue 1, Oxford: Berg, 1997,
p. 1.