48 The Language of Fashion
of clothes into articles) does not sell according to what it signifies:
there are no ‘signifiers’ on the shelves of large stores.^15 We will get
an idea of this ambiguity by considering the very general ‘vesteme’:
the item (defined by its point of support).^16 The item and the article do
indeed belong to the same order: by definition they are discontinuous
objects. But whereas commercial taxonomy distinguishes articles by
the complex combination of different criteria (the position on the vertical
axis and horizontal axis of the body, the utilitarian function, the shape
of the yokes, the existence of a characteristic ‘detail’, etc.), for the item
I do not need to retain that which makes it mean, that which contrasts
it with other signifiers: whether by its very existence,^17 or by such and
such a detail. It follows then that signifying units are often either bigger
or smaller than the commercial article: there can be meaning at the
very general level, for example, of the item worn on the outside of the
shoulder, be it a coat, cape, raincoat or suit jacket, or simply at the
level of a tiny detail (to wear a collar turned up or not); conversely, an
article (a jacket, a skirt) can be devoid of all meaning. The first task then
for a reading of fashion clothing—also the most intractable, given the
commercial nature of the only terminology we have at our disposal—is
to break up the notion of article so as to get a grip on the semiogenic
element in all its mobility.
- The second general comment I would like to add to the question
of formal types is this: the ‘proof’ of the vesteme is that it necessarily
sits astride two structural planes: that of the syntagm and that of the
system. For, on the one hand, the vesteme is indeed a segment of
the vestimentary chain, a concrete piece of space, the fragment in a
continuum. on the other, if the vesteme occupies this space, it is because
it has dislodged, so to speak, all the other concurrent features to which
it stands in opposition. To return to the example of the shoulder item, in
one way it is a fragment of vestimentary space, in line with the garment
worn on the hips, in tune with the other items that have been chosen
to be combined with it, to pick up the hjelmslev-Togeby classification;
and all these links of commonality, selection or simple combination are
purely syntagmatic: with the point of support and the ‘join’ in place
there can be only one unit of meaning in this body-juncture.^18 In another
way, it is actually part of a type: the shoulder item; and here a whole
paradigm opens up, in which each term has meaning only because it
excludes the others. an anorak is a syntagmatic unit in that it links up