Moda e mito. Genesi di un problema estetico.

As Barthes argues, myth is “a system of communication, a message,” and fashion, expressed through the adornment of the self, constitutes a form of discourse. This discourse is articulated not through words, but through images, appearances, and the symbolic and material relations embodied in society: fashion thus becomes the “material of mythical speech.” In this sense, the mythology of fashion can be understood as the counterpart of a broader social mythology grounded in history and shaped by the transformations of the society that produces it. From this perspective, the discontinuity that characterizes fashion and the tension between distinction and recognition that defines it reflect the logic of an economic and cultural system, as well as of a social mythology, that reproduces the dominant order precisely where everything appears to be changing most rapidly.