90861 - Sociosemiotics of Fashion

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course the student has acquired the ability to analyise and understand the most common types of texts used in fashion and life style communication and design. The result is pursued by introducing the theories of semiotics in their application to the analysis and planning of commercial and social messages.

Course contents

The course in Sociosemiotics of Fashion is part of the program's last year offer and has been conceived for students who want to acquire pre-professional abilities in fashion communication management and design. Some entry competences are required that should have been earned during the first two years. In particular the students must be familiar with: the social approach to fashion; structures and processes of fashion communication and the vision of fashion in the framework of art and culture.

The course aims to provide students with tools for understanding and analysing the stage costume-fashion-society dynamic and to enable them in the workshop to directly realise project actions within this operational framework.

On this ground, the course will focus on channeling the personal creative potential of the participants into a meta-design connected to the conception of fashion as a sociosemiotic phenomenon.

The 2023-2024 edition of the course is held in cooperation with the theatre company 'Fratelli di Taglia', as part of the Contemporary Classics Youz Generation of Ideas project, developed within the Youz Officina programme sponsored by Regione Emilia-Romagna.

Specifically, the class's contribution to the project will concern the design of costume concepts for the performance, and if possible their setting. The course will be divided into a preparatory part and a workshop part.

Non-attending students will follow a track based on the same content but with timing, modalities and evaluation adapted to the non-frequency.

Macroarea 1. Preparation to the project: fashion , theater and society

The design activity will be preceded by a reflection on the relationship between stage costume (theatre, film etc.) and fashion, conducted along the socio-semiotic dimension.

We start from the assumption of public behaviour as theatrical performance, developed by Ervin Goffman, in order to stimulate the socio-semiotic reading of self-presentation behaviour. Fashion in this view is a socially institutionalised mode of collective management of the public image according to predominantly aesthetic parameters.

On this basis, theatre appears as acting within another acting, situated in artificial social worlds, narrative worlds.

 

Macroarea 2: The meta-project: from dress to costume, from costume to dress

Awareness of the public image’s social dinamic makes it possible to fully discover the potential of theatre, which, by dropping the barriers that contain it in social acting, makes it possible to transport into such acting contents and values capable of stimulating, even changing it.

Thus the stage costume, which was created to imitate the clothing of both narrative and real worlds, overcomes and transforms them, and is reflected, in a metamorphosis that the project can shape, in fashion and trends. The very title of the project confirms this: "Classico Contemporaneo" aims to read and reread the classics through a contemporary language, close to the way of communicating that the so-called "millennials" use, and not only from a dramaturgical point of view, but starting from the staging, from the costumes to the technology, from the lights to the music, from the production to the circulation.

 

 

Readings/Bibliography

Texts and other material will be supplied by the teacher via the e-learning platform.

Teaching methods

Teaching will take place in presence, but the Teams platform can be used for group work at home.

Visits to a theatre will be scheduled.

Students who choose to attend the workshop will have to guarantee attendance for 75% of the teaching and visiting hours.

The course is based on a Moodle e-learning platform. Subscription to the platform is required. The platform allows students and teacher to interact, including those not attending classes, so as to reduce the differences between the two ways of learning.

The Moodle instance for the a.y. 2023-2024 will be available one week before the beginning of the course.

Students must request credentials from the teacher.

Assessment methods

The evaluation of learning will take place through the presentation of a group work on the meta-project. Individual exercises may be assigned as part of the workshop.

Grades are assigned according to the following criteria:

18-20: There are no elements of excellence or originality in the student’s contribution, or deficiencies are just enough to balance the positive parts of the performance; (E-)

21-24: The performance presents some good points but is not fully developed or it shows some serious deficiency, though having a good general standard; (E E+)

25-27: The performance is good or very good, but some or several weak points prevent it from reaching a top grade. (D D+)

28-30: Very good, no flaws, some or several original elements (C C+)

30 cum laude: excellent under any aspect, original and outstanding (A)

(ECTS grading tables are reported for a comparison)

https://www.unibo.it/en/teaching/enrolment-transfer-and-final-examination/the-university-system/ects-label/ects-grading-tables/ects-grading-tables-for-ay-2019-2020

Subscription to the platform is required to follow the course and to be admitted to the exam, both for attending and non-attending students.

www.gproni.org/moodle (if the link doesn't work please copy and paste the URL on the browser).

Please ask the teacher for the password to enter the Moodle platform during classes or by e-mail to giampaolo.proni@unibo.it

Teaching tools

Portable and desktop PCs, video projector, WiFi access point, internet connection, e-learning platform, personal smartphones.

Office hours

See the website of Giampaolo Proni