Semiotics, Fashion and Cognition - Mathias Vestergaard Corp.

Mathias Vestergaard Jakobsen Semiotics, Fashion an Cognition 2008-06-11
a masculine contrast. 5 In any case, the perception of the dress is not just affected by the shoulder
strap itself, but through the entire corpus of experiences activated by it.
Returning to Barthes’s example of sportswear we now see it as an activation of a background frame
of sports and leisure, due to the iconic visual resemblance with the sportswear seen on athletes.
This becomes even clearer when we look at sportswear today. Sportswear has been split into two
overall categories: sportswear intended for sports and sportswear intended for looking like sports.
For instance the international sportswear brand Nike launched a series of running shoes called
Shox, however, these shoes are far from ideal for running, or performing any sport activity at all. 6
Yet they signify sportiness by the iconic likeness – they simply look like sport-shoes, and so they
activate a sport frame. Similar examples can be found in the high-end fashion market where the
Belgian designer Raf Simons made a collection with backpacker-looking jackets and hiking shorts
(Spring/summer 2008). No backpacker would ever go on a hike in one of those jackets. Not
because of the €1.000 price tag (real adventure gear is expensive too!) but because it all just “looks
like” hiking gear. When you walk down the sidewalk in New York, nobody will know if the outfit
you are wearing is good for a hike or climbing a mountain, but they might recognize the iconic
resemblance, and the outdoor activity frame is activated, and in clothing communication, that is all
that matters.
From clothing to fashion – the double function of magazines
The first important observation is that everyone in the modern western civilization is somehow
affected by fashion. Watching a movie or a TV-show will always imply a certain fashion in clothing.
Advertisements on billboards and in newspapers convey fashion. Just walking down the street.
There seems to be no escape. Anyone who tries to avoid fashion only negates it, and thus the active
anti-fashion also acknowledges the existence of a fashion.
What actually constitutes, defines and regulates the current fashion, e.g. how you must look in
order to be fashionable, seems to be an extremely complex social ordering system which cannot be
explained in this paper, however, there seems to be a relatively simple cognitive explanation for
how we perceive something as fashionable. Because we all have experiences with fashion from TV,
movies, magazines, advertisements, stores and other people, we all have a rich set of background
knowledge. My hypothesis then, is that an outfit is seen a fashionable when it actives mental
structures related to fashion. Thus it is the mental process of recognizing and associating elements
of dress with a larger fashionable prototype. Just as an outfit can activate masculinity through
elements of the male uniform or the male business suit, an outfit or garment can also activate an
abstract frame of fashionableness. One of the most intuitive examples is the tall and thin model,
with long legs, high heeled shoes and some kind of dress that looks a bit weird at first. Everyone
who has ever seen a photo or video clip from a runway show will recognize this stereotype and even
if the dress was fashionable ten years ago, it will still be associated with fashion and activate the
frame of fashionableness.
My former roommate once asked me about advice before going on a date. He shoved me several
pairs of shoes, and pointed to a pair of sporty-looking trainers while explaining that he wanted to
5 It is important to stress that my distinction between masculine and feminine in this example is just one out
of many distinctions that can be perceived in an outfit.
6 For a non-scientific review, check out
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/259007/shoe_review_nike_shox_and_sports_performance.htm
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