Fashion as Cultural Translation: Signs, Images, Narratives

How is the language of fashion structured? Drawing on the ideas of R. Barthes and W. Benjamin, Patricia Kaleftato examines fashion as a semiotic system consisting of signs of the body. The author asserts that fashion is constantly in a process of cultural translation, becoming a point of intersection of various languages – not only film, literature, and music, but also urban roads, uniforms, or professions. The first chapters are dedicated to the specifics of the formation and functioning of fashion narratives over time (from historical to biographical) and space (from urban to virtual). Kaleftato then explores the body as a social subject embedded in the fashion system, and in the concluding section analyzes how communication technologies have changed the very definition of human corporeality in public consciousness. From 19th-century urban culture to clothing recycling, from Italian style to plastic surgery and tattoos – this study demonstrates how tightly fashion is woven into a multitude of sociocultural and natural phenomena. 

Patricia Kaleftato is a professor of cultural sociology at the Faculty of Political Science at Aldo Moro University in Bari.