A Research On Postmodern Western Fashion Codes

Clothing is an art as well as a tool that directly decorates, beautifies and protects human body. Bearing rich cultural connotation, clothing is also the visualization of human culture. To broaden the research scope and theoretical depth, every kind of fashion can be understood as a whole code system from semiotics perspective as a carrier of abundant cultural connotation and social meanings.It was since 1960 s that the postmodern western fashion appeared, such as sub-cultural fashion, retro fashion, unisex fashion and deconstructive fashion. Each of them can be understood as a whole fashion code with complete code meaning and directly joins in the process of the wearers’ identity modeling. By analyzing the social and cultural significance of fashion codes, this paper means to examine how and in what degree the clothing fashion influence individual’s identity construction.This paper mainly consists of five chapters. Chapter One analyses the research status of this topic at home and abroad besides introducing its research significance and research methods. Chapter Two reviews the main theories and the related researches: Semiotics, Culture Studies, Encoding and Decoding. In this chapter, the author also defines two key terms: sign and code, due to the frequent confusion these terms caused among normal readers. Chapter Three analyses some major characteristics of postmodern western fashion codes and their encoding and decoding process, including sub-culture fashion codes, retro fashion codes, unisex fashion codes and deconstructive fashion codes. In Chapter Four, by making deeper theoretical analysis on all kinds of social and cultural meaning behind fashion codes,the paper focuses on the relationships between subculture fashion codes and class and race, retro fashion codes and class mobility; unisex fashion codes and gender construction, gender identity ambiguity; deconstructive fashion codes and so on.Chapter Five comes to a conclusion by making a general and retrospective review of the whole paper.