40 The Language of Fashion
I will restrict myself to the first of these, and consider only the inventory
that goes with the types of forms.
- obviously it is easier to bring into my inventory those links
which are entirely verbalized, those links where the signifier is a
commentary on the image and not the image itself, because in such
links the signified and the signifier belong—at least in the practical
sense—to the same language. unfortunately, the fashion magazine
very often gives me links where the signifier is purely graphic (this
nonchalant ladies’ suit, this elegant dress, the casual two-piece); I
then do not have any way—unless intuitively—to decide just what
in this suit, in this dress or in the two-piece signifies nonchalance,
elegance or casualness: the demonstrative (this, the)^6 refers here
to a general form, and it is this that paradoxically stops me from
having any analytical precision without which I cannot isolate the
vestimentary sign.
Confronted with these links—what we might call demonstrative
links—I am a bit like a decipherer who has to uncover the signifying units
of a continuous message; the only way here is to look for repetitions:
it is by seeing a particular zone of the message coming back, identical
to itself, that it can be seen to have the same meaning. Similarly for
fashion clothing: it is by looking in a collection of photographs to see
how a certain feature goes with the concept of nonchalance that I
will finally be able to come to the conclusion that this feature signifies
nonchalance—or at least be able to see what I am specially interested
in at the moment—that is, whether it really is a unit of meaning. - That’s one difficulty; here is another one. If I read that a square-
necked, white silk sweater is very smart, it is impossible for me to say—
without again having to revert to intuition—which of these four features
(sweater, silk, white, square neck) act as signifiers for the concept
smart: is it only one feature which carries the meaning, or conversely do
non-signifying elements come together and suddenly create meaning
as soon as they are combined? once again here, it will, in theory, be a
patient study of the stable residues that will provide me with the answer;
or else I will find out that silk, for example, is a material that is necessarily
linked to smartness, or on the contrary that meaning appears only when,
for example, a colour is combined with a material. Either way, it will be
useful for me to note that the sweater, silk, white and the squareness of