The myth breakers : challenging Roland Barthes' The Fashion System

Abstract

The aim of the study is to challenge - using fashion photography as its main implement - Roland Barthes, who in The Fashion System states that Fashion's ban ton does not permit it to show anything that is aesthetically or morally displeasing, and that in its imagery Fashion is always p01irayed within a theatre of context in order to perpetuate its myth Analyses were made of Barthes' writings, particularly The Photographic Message, Rhetoric of the Image, and Myth Today, and instances when fashion photography was considered aesthetically and morally offensive, discussed. However, once the photographs' audiences and their possible interpretation of three images dated 1958 and 1993 were analysed, it transpired that what could at first glance be considered offensive, is ultimately still the Fashion System in operation.