Without wishing to associate them inconsiderately with the errors in a
work in which they are not involved, I would nonetheless like to thank for
their support, advice and friendship, which allowed me to complete this
study: Fernand Braudel, G. Friedmann, Cl. Lévi-Strauss, Jean Stoetzel,
G. Greimas, henri raymond, marthe robert and Jean vannier.
Preface
The object of this study is not a sociology, or a psychology, nor an
aesthetics, and even less so a philosophy of Fashion;^2 but something,
unfortunately, much drier; for the aim here is above all methodological.
What we wanted expressly to do here was to apply the analytical
procedures of structural linguistics to a non-linguistic object, Fashion
clothing, and thereby reconstitute the formal system of meaning which
humans elaborate using this object;^3 in short, if a little approximate,
to establish a ‘grammar’ of Fashion. In other words, this work can be
defined as an attempt at applied semiology.
Fifty years ago, in his Course on General Linguistics, Saussure
postulated the birth and the development of a general science of signs,
which he called Semiology, of which linguistics was to be but a part,
albeit an exemplary one. Initially taken up here and there in the work of
Chapter 7
[An Early Preface to]
The Fashion System
1