The Language of Fashion

‘Blue is in Fashion This Year’ 47

material
Colour
motif

Details

Collar

Sleeves

Pockets

Waist

vents

Fastenings

Pleats

Edging

Stitching

Trimmings

Items
(defined by their point of support)
head
neck
Shoulders
hips
Shoulders–hips (one-piece items)
hands
Feet

Way of wearing

association of elements

naturally, each of these types raises problems, requires explanations.
as it is a question here of only outlining a methodological itinerary, I will
restrict myself to commenting upon two aspects of this inventory.

13. I will insist again on the following, that these different types do
    not in any way come from a logical or intuitive consideration of women’s
    clothing. I have not tried to classify the different elements (or features)
    of this clothing according to the divisions that might be suggested to
    me by aesthetic, anatomical, technical, commercial, terminological or
    utilitarian principles: it is simply the signifying power of such and such
    a zone or accident of clothing which designates them as units, and it is
    the whole set of morphologically identical units that constitutes a formal
    type. So it follows that these types are at the same time very near to and
    a long way off the classification of clothing that common sense might
    imagine. very near because—and it is not pointless to restate this in a
    resolutely ‘formalist’ investigation—the meanings of (fashion) clothing
    are obviously linked—in a certain way^14 —to a vestimentary practice,
    to the extent that one finds in clothing as a signifying ensemble the
    technical matrix to which it is subject (that such and such a stitching
    is a sign does not remove the instrumental function of stitching). and
    very far off, because an item of clothing (to take the current division