Re-presentation Policies of the Fashion Industry - Eleni Mouratidou

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      This research falls within the disciplinary framework of the ICS. It is defined as a study of the rewriting and transformation of communication strategies and market mediation, the latter also being understood from an advertising perspective, i.e. “a relay between supply and demand, the advertiser and its addressees, products and consumers” (de Iulio 2016, p. 64, author’s translation) generating symbolic and economic stakes. Its grounding in the ICS also testifies to an interscientific approach and mobilizes as much research in the socioeconomics of the creative industries as in semiotics31 and discourse analysis. The aim of this analytical position is to bring together around the same object of study a socioeconomic approach to fashion and luxury as a creative industry and a semiotic and discursive analysis of the mediations of this industry, mediations which, let us recall, are understood here as re-presentational policies. These two approaches are considered from a complementary perspective. The semiotic and discursive analysis will illustrate the socioeconomic stakes that shape this industry. The socioeconomic analysis will shed light on the way in which the same models of luxury fashion engender, or even impose, certain re-presentational policies implemented by this industry. The objective is to situate the strategies and market mediations of the fashion industry in the gaps between the production of discourse here conceived as being “at the same time controlled, selected, organized and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to conjure up its powers and dangers, to control the random event, to dodge the heavy, formidable materiality” (Foucault 1971, p.11, author’s translation) and “industrialized cultural and informational productions both from the point of view of their production and their consumption as well as the complex modalities of their circulation in societies” (Miège 2017, p. 9, author’s translation).

      I.8.1. The semio approach

      Semiotic and discursive analysis is used to observe and question the communicational hybridizations resulting from the strategies analyzed, the rewriting processes to which these strategies bear witness, and the shaping of discourse – in the semiotic sense of the term – allowing us to grasp the re-presentational policies implemented by advertisers in this industry. In an effort to circumscribe the theoretical framework within which this analytical approach is thought of and applied, the aim now is to evoke a semio approach that brings together different theoretical currents.

      As much an analysis as a position to be adopted, the semio approach is conceived of through semiotics, semio-pragmatics, semiology and discourse analysis mobilized according to the communicational practice observed and the analytical relevance that accompanies it. In other words, it is a matter of opting for one or another theoretical and methodological framework depending on the objects, the latter being endowed with a “semiotic overdose or [an] emphatic hold over the sign” (Boutaud and Berthelot-Guiet 2013, author’s translation), or even on the discourses. The semiotic point of view that marks current research is defined as the outline of the axiological and symbolic system of commercial mediations as deployed by the fashion industry’s re-presentation policies. It is not a method in its own right, but an approach that consists of bringing together, around a single object of study, different theoretical and methodological frameworks that make it possible to question the staging of the communicative processes under analysis and to grasp the “productive tension between semiotics and communication” (Boutaud and Eliseo-Veron 2007, p. 25, author’s translation).

      Greimassian semiotics and the semiotics of the Belgian school of thought are called upon to account for the visual dimension of certain re-presentational policies such as advertising campaigns or ready-to-wear collections (Floch 1985, 1990; Groupe µ 1992; Klinkenberg 1996a; Beyaert-Geslin 2009; Dondero 2009), their genres, their statutes, their formats (Basso Fossali and Dondero 2011) and their enunciative strategies (Fontanille 2003, 2015). The relevance of this approach consists of highlighting the visual and generic transformations that are taking place, but also the enunciative hybridizations of the actors who are the ones enacting these practices.

      Discourse analysis is included here in the general approach qualified as semio, on the one hand, insofar as it is mobilized as an analytical framework for discursive staging contributing to the fashion industry’s re-presentation policies, and, on the other hand, as soon as certain theoretical contributions of discourse analysis are adapted to the study of syncretic elements, bringing together verbal and non-verbal productions. It is from this perspective that I have recourse to Dominique Maingueneau’s work on the density that structures an “enunciation scene” (Maingueneau 1998b, pp. 55–71) and on the notion of “reinvestment” (Maingueneau 1991), and to Krieg-Planque’s (2009) work on the notion of “formula” and, as far as our research is concerned, on its extension into non-verbal utterances (Mouratidou 2018a).

      In an interdisciplinary way, this analytical position is covered by Roland Barthes’ semiological project, not so much from the point of view of the method as from the point of view of its aim, the search for meaning, making it possible to construct an ideological critical praxis (1985). The various analytical frameworks called upon throughout this research will make it possible to grasp the life of the signs emitted by the fashion industry within social life (Saussure 1916, p. 33), to account for their political influence and the way in which they contribute to the transformation of social life. While the critical dimension is not a position adopted a priori, it is because this research is not conceived of as aiming to criticize the luxury fashion industry’s capitalist system. However, it can take place through the questioning of the “semantic and symbolic system of our civilisation” (Barthes 1985, p. 14), in which the fashion industry participates and gives an account of the societal powers and political stakes that permeate our civilization. As Jeanneret (2007, p. 111) reminds us, “when we read Barthes’ inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, given in February 1977 [...], we cannot help but be struck by the fact that semiology remains, as in the age of Mythologies, a political work aimed at defining the circulation of power. It is not for nothing that Michel Foucault recommended Barthes’ election” (author’s translation).

      The need for a discussion between semiotic approaches and the socioeconomic stakes of the creative and cultural industries arises from the observation that “the processual and historical approach that triumphs in industrial society does not entirely erase the importance of a theory of representation, i.e. the link between signs and human and social realities. It merely covers it” (Jeanneret 2008, p. 521, author’s translation).

      While a socioeconomic analysis of the cultural and creative industries can shed light on the organizational and economic dimension of industrial industries and sectors as well as the practices and social transformations that result from them, it can also be seen as a search for the symbolic issues associated with the industries and sectors studied (Bouquillion et al. 2013).

      Socioeconomic analysis is mobilized with the aim of grasping the perspectives that characterize what economists Barrère and Santagata (2005) call the “market models” (p. 91) that have replaced the “aristocratic model” (p. 84) of fashion. This socioeconomic transformation is notably governed by “a strategy of dual positioning [set up with] the control of firms by a few powerful industrial and financial groups” (Bouquillion et al. 2013, p. 112, author’s translation). It therefore

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