[An Early Preface to] The Fashion System 67a particular method of analysis and a particular object. In short, this
book [The Fashion System] is an exercise, and thus only indirectly part
of semiology’s current usage (which is actually somewhat Borgesian in
the manner in which semiological discourse is infinite whilst its object
infinitely delayed); so one should not expect to find any more or less
of a link here between this work and the current close reflections on
semiology than, say, between a collection of musical scales and the
theory of tonality. on the other hand, however, inasmuch as it is—
arguably—linked to structuralism, semiology is nevertheless far from
being a recognized (or even known) science and how could it be, since
it does not exist? The lateness with which our work here is appearing
cannot fail to be augmented paradoxically by an esoteric element: that
is both its banality and its provocative nature, such is the uncomfortable
situation in relation to the historical moment in which this work finds
itself.
Like all objects, fashion clothing (that is, women’s clothes as de-
scribed by Fashion every year in its specialist publications) can be
studied from several points of view. We can analyse the way in which
the clothing is manufactured (technology), launched on to the market
(economics), or disseminated into real society (sociology); we can
reconstruct its history, its aesthetics or its psychology. none of these
points of view is exclusive but each requires a particular method in
the sense that each analysis retains only certain aspects of Fashion
clothing, depending on what the initial aim is: the technician will see
in fashion clothing only what has brought about its fabrication; the
economist prices, the sociologist the clothing models, the historian
how things have changed, the aesthetician the forms, the psychologist
attitudes; and it is by starting from these chosen traits that each
analysis will be built; in other words, each one isolates in the object
of study ‘a homogenous level of description’ dependent on the set
of aspects which are of interest to the point of view adopted, which
means of course that the rest are wilfully discarded. This choice—
augmented necessarily by an act of rejection—is called pertinence by
linguists; ‘pertinent’ means all those traits of the object that can be
apprehended by the point of view which the analyst has decided to
adopt. The pertinence principle, well formulated by andré martinet^6 but
whose epistemological importance is yet to be measured, dominates
entirely (at least it is hoped) the work presented here; confronted with