Language of Fashion Book

Great reflection on the role of fashion in the society and their interconnections. My favourite essay from this book is "From Gemstone to Jewellery". The best way to describe this book is to provide few excerpts:

"System is completely different from gestalt; it is essentially defined by normative links which justify, oblige, prohibit, tolerate, in a word control the arrangement of garments on a concrete wearer who is identified in their social and historical place: it is a value."

"Dress is, in the fullest sense, a ´social model´, a more or less standardized picture of expected collective behaviour; and it is essentially at this level that it has meaning."

"So why in our world has the gemstone been associated so constantly with a woman, her powers and her evil spells? It is because the husband very quickly delegated to his wife the job of showing off his own wealth (certain sociologists use this to explain the origins of fashion): the wife provides poetic proof of the wealth and power of the husband."

"The superiority of status, which for democratic reasons could no longer be advertised, was hidden and sublimated beneath a new value: taste, or better still, as the word is appropriately ambiguous, distinction."