Fashion is changing. Short skirts, loud colours, boys in long shirts and girls
in trousers. Women’s liberation? Loss of male virility? It is not so simple.
So we asked three sociologists to consider this debate, apparently
frivolous but which they are studying very seriously. Henri Lefebvre,
Professor at the Sorbonne, is amongst other things the author of a
Sociology of Everyday Life; he is currently working on a study Fashion
and Culture.^2 Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Roland Barthes
is, as we know, the author of mythologies and has for a long time been
teaching a course on ‘the Fashion System’ using women’s magazines.
As for Jean Duvignaud, Professor at the University of Orleans, his recent
books on theatre (Sociology of Theatre, and The actor) incline him to
see in fashion an extension of theatrical performance.
Le Nouvel Observateur: How is the sociologist interested by fashion?
Roland Barthes: Fashion has been a privileged object for
sociologists since Spencer. Fashion is a phenomenon both of innovation
Chapter 8
Fashion, a Strategy of
Desire: Round-table
Discussion with Roland
Barthes, Jean Duvignaud
and Henri Lefebvre
1