"The Language of Fashion" by Roland Barthes is a seminal work that treats clothing as a complex system of signs and meanings. Instead of just looking at fabric, he analyzes fashion as a structural language. Key Concepts
or essays within the book (e.g., "The Fashion System")
: He distinguishes between the "garment-as-image" (photography) and the "garment-as-written" (descriptions in magazines) [1, 2].
: Barthes argues that fashion magazines actually construct the meaning of clothes more than the designers do [1, 3].