In his consideration of the language of the fashion magazine-the structural analysis of descriptions of women''s clothing by writers about fashion-Barthes gives us a brief history of semiology. At the same time, he identifies economics as the underlying reason for the luxuriant prose of the fashion magazine: "Calculating, industrial society is obliged to form consumers who don''t calculate; if clothing''s producers and consumers had the same consciousness, clothing would be bought (and produced) only at the very slow rate of its dilapidation."
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