Written clothing : how fashion works in the street style photography blog

In this paper, I consider the street style blog through a close analysis of one of its most distinctive features"”the combination of image and text"”against Roland Barthes' two distinct representations of the garment"”image clothing and written clothing. Text in the street style blog is largely provided through the commentary of viewer"users. Described as a 'living fabric' by Scott Schuman, creator of the influential site The Sartorialist, this inherently promiscuous commentary functions like the caption of the traditional photograph, as analysed by Barthes in The Fashion System, by eliminating uncertainty and directing "immediate and diffuse knowledge"¦of Fashion" (Barthes 1983:17). What unfolds in this living fabric, then, is the 'backstage' machinations of how the fashion image constructs or invents a narrative of desire around a fashion object and thus opens up one path to understanding the ontology of the fashion photograph.