I have used the versions of Barthes’s pieces on clothing and fashion as
they appear in their original place of publication, though the anthology
Le Bleu est à la mode cette année. Et autres articles (Paris, Institut
Français de la mode, 2001) was invaluable. as well as the original place
of publication, the reader will also find a reference to the French version
as it appears in Barthes’s Oeuvres complètes (3 volumes, Paris, Seuil
1993, 1994 and 1995).
There is also in this anthology, I am pleased to say, a piece which
was unpublished in Barthes’s lifetime, an early version of the preface
to The Fashion System. This manuscript appeared recently in a special
number of the Swiss journal [VWA] (‘Le Cabinet des manuscrits’), no.
25 (spring) 1998, 7–28); and I am grateful to the editors of this journal
as well as to the ‘Cabinet des manuscrits’ at the Bibliothèque de la
Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland for permitting me to include it here.
unfortunately there is no date on the manuscript and no recollection of
its place of composition. as an early draft of the preface to The Fashion
System it seems (by my guess) to have been written around 1963. I
have translated the footnotes (somewhat incomplete) as they appear
in VWA whilst trying to supply further information where necessary or
possible. This applies in fact to all of Barthes’s referencing in this book,
especially in footnotes, and any clarifications made are signalled by
[‘Editors’ note’]. a glossary of names is also included at the end of the
anthology.
Barthes is renowned as a skilful and sometimes startling essayist
in the great French tradition (though this expression might surprise his
Editor’s Note and
Acknowledgements