RESEARCH

Fashion as a Communication System

Fashion can be understood as a system of visual communication in which clothing functions as a carrier of meaning. Within semiotics, Roland Barthes describes clothing as a collection of signs that communicate information about the wearer (Barthes, 2006). Elements such as silhouette, material and colour contribute to the construction of meaning.

This approach assumes that clothing is ‘readable’. Barthes’ model presupposes a relatively fixed relationship between sign and meaning, but that assumption works far less well for clothing than for language. Clothing is not a closed sign system: how something is ‘read’ depends on cultural background, environment, generation, social class and the context in which it is worn. Barthes moreover analyses clothing primarily as ‘written fashion’ as illustrated in magazines rather than as worn fashion in everyday life, which is precisely what I am looking at (Barthes, 2006, p. 13).

Within the contemporary fashion debate, this instability of meaning is playing an increasingly prominent role. The rise of gender-neutral fashion, the growing visibility of non-Western clothing traditions in high fashion, and the influence of social media on the spread of style codes have made the relationship between clothing and identity even more complex. Where relatively stable visual codes once functioned, the suit as a symbol of authority, the uniform as a sign of belonging to a particular group, contemporary fashion is fragmented into a multitude of simultaneous, often conflicting meanings. Styles are detached from their original context, stripped of meaning through Instagram, and reassembled into combinations that are legible to some and completely unreadable to others. For a project that attempts to communicate individual identity through clothing, this has major implications: the viewer who ‘reads’ the garment brings their own entirely personal frame of reference that is almost impossible for the designer to steer.

Identity and Social Presentation 

Erving Goffman describes identity as a form of social performance, in which individuals present themselves depending on the situation (Goffman, 1959). Clothing plays a role in this presentation as a ‘costume’ in the theatrical metaphor Goffman employs. Goffman’s model offers a useful starting point, but in this research it runs up against a limit: his theory assumes that the performer controls their own presentation.

In this project, however, it is I as the designer who largely takes over that control. The garments do not function as an expression by the wearer but as an interpretation by the maker. This shifts the question: it is no longer about how people present themselves through clothing, but about how a designer presents someone else and what may be lost in that process. This makes the authenticity of the representation problematic.

What Butler says has a direct consequence for this project. If identity only comes into being through how you present yourself, then the question is no longer: how do I translate who someone is into clothing? The question becomes: what image of that person does this garment call up? The designer is then not capturing an existing identity but giving it a form. That form in turn influences how others perceive that person. Clothing in that case does more than show it colours how someone is seen.

This connects to what becomes visible in practice within this research. Several participants responded to their design not only with recognition (‘yes, that’s how I feel’) but also with surprise or discovery (‘I never thought this would suit me, but I understand that this outfit is for me’). That response suggests that the design does not merely register but also activates making visible an aspect of identity that the wearer might not have consciously named. That is something different from portraying; it is closer to a form of articulation.

Concretely, this means that for the practice of REBIRTH the designer is not simply a translator but may also function as a kind of shaper of the identity they aim to portray. The choice to read Christoph as ‘introverted and controlled’ is not a neutral registration of fact but an interpretation that is reinforced through the design. That design in turn influences how Christoph is perceived by others and possibly, in some cases, how he thinks about himself. It sets people thinking.


The clothing partly creates the identity it claims to represent. This is a property of every representation but it calls for awareness. A designer who works with personal identities carries a certain responsibility that goes beyond aesthetic choices: whether intentional or not, they also help define who someone can be in the eyes of others.

This tension is visible in the work of Raf Simons. His collections carry strong conceptual weight while the garments simultaneously function within a wearable context. This is what makes his work relevant: it shows how identity can be suggested without being pinned down in every detail.

This project positions itself within that tension. The designs are not intended as costumes, but they do push up against boundaries. This immediately raises a question: to what extent does a garment remain fashion when it is so strongly focused on communicating identity? When expression becomes too emphatic, a design can shift towards costume, identity is then not suggested but imposed. At the same time, I do not experience this tension between fashion and costume as problematic; rather, I see it as an interesting in-between space full of new insights where new meanings can emerge.

Also relevant is the question of how the wearer themselves relates to the design. In this project, the seven men are not anonymous models but people I genuinely know, who have opinions about how they are perceived and who ultimately wear the design themselves in a live setting.


This adds a layer that is less self-evident in a more commercial context: the wearer has a stake in how they are portrayed. The design touches something personal. Some participants recognised themselves directly in the design. Others were surprised or hesitant at first. These reactions say something about the gap between how someone sees themselves and how they are seen by another. As a designer, you stand right in that gap. You cannot erase it, but you have to engage with it consciously.

Selection of Participants

For this research, eight men were originally selected from my personal network based on variation in personality, background and lifestyle. In fact, I initially wanted to choose an even larger group to achieve as much diversity as possible. During the process, however, it became clear that working with eight or more participants was not feasible. To safeguard quality, the focus shifted to seven people; one participant (Kenji) falls outside the final elaboration. Kenji ultimately turned out to carry a particular simplicity that was precisely difficult to capture in its strength and nuance and that was drawing attention away from the rest. This choice underlines an important insight: depth is more valuable here than quantity, but it simultaneously reveals that the method has limited scalability and is time-intensive.

Translation into Design

The identity analysis forms the basis for the design phase. The insights gained are translated into design elements: silhouette, material use, colour, texture, details and finish. I also work with a design system in which an interplay exists between a base layer and an outer layer, always supplemented with a twist; an unexpected detail or element that makes a less obvious quality visible, or a quality that only becomes apparent once you know someone better. This connects to my preference for playful details and gives the design a more personal charge. This system helps structure the design process, but in practice it proves not always sufficient. Not every identity fits neatly within this layering. The system therefore functions more as a tool than as a fixed method: it offers direction, but no guarantee of a successful translation.

Although the process was initially structured around three phases, identity analysis, design development and materialization, in practice this structure offers only limited guidance. The phases overlap, shift and require constant revision.


Design decisions are driven not only by analysis but also by intuition, material possibilities and limitations. This undermines the idea that identity can be systematically and controllably translated into clothing.

Attempts to structure this complexity through the three-layer model provide a handhold, but by categorising qualities and linking them to formal elements, there is a risk that identity is reduced to a designable logic. The ‘twist’, intended to make a hidden layer visible, functions ambivalently in this respect.



On the one hand it introduces nuance; on the other it suggests that complexity can be deliberately added as a design strategy. This raises the question of whether layering genuinely emerges or is merely simulated whether the twist is authentic, or simply a design device.

This creates a tension: to what extent does the material itself contribute to the concept, and to what extent is this meaning constructed after the fact? If a story is needed to make the material work, is it then the material that communicates or is it the story? And is the choice of fabric not ultimately more a personal preference on my part as a designer?


Furthermore, the limited availability of materials sometimes forces adjustments to the design, causing the process to shift partly from concept-driven to more practically steered. This reveals a tension that characterises the whole project: the ambition to construct meaning meets the reality of material, making and feasibility.

As a result, there is a risk that the design communicates less than intended, and that meaning is primarily projected by whoever reads the design rather than communicated by the person wearing it.


Moreover, the quest for clarity often leads to simplification. The more explicitly a form tries to communicate a quality, the greater the risk that the design moves towards stereotypes or costume design.


The design process therefore moves continuously between over-clarity and illegibility, without reaching a stable middle ground and I am not certain that such a middle ground exists at all.

This creates a risk of overloading: adding multiple layers of meaning that function primarily within the design itself but are not necessarily perceived by the viewer.


This undermines the idea that clothing can function as a means of communication and again underlines the dependence on interpretation.


It raises an uncomfortable question: who is the design actually made for? For the wearer, the viewer or for me as a designer, to generate knowledge?

At the same time, this process has produced something that a more structured approach would have been less likely to yield: a sharper sense of where clothing as a medium reaches its limits. Not as failure, but as information. Every moment a design did not do what I wanted it to do raised a new question. Why does this detail not work without explanation? Why does this silhouette feel more like a stereotype than a portrait?

Those questions are the result of this research more so than the designs themselves. They give direction to how I want to work in the future: with greater awareness of the medium’s limits, and with less tendency to try to capture every aspect of someone in a single garment or look.

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