© Karen de Perthuis 2014. Written Clothing: How Fashion Works in the Street Style Photography Blog A conference paper presented at “Fashion Thinking – Theory, History, Practice”, 30 Oct‐1Nov 2014, University of Southern Denmark. 1 Written Clothing How Fashion Works in the Street Style Photography Blog Karen de Perthuis Abstract 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. KEYWORDS fashion photography, street style blog, The Sartorialist, Roland Barthes, written clothing, The Fashion System. …pictures of people in fashionable clothes are not fashion photography… Nancy Hall‐Duncan (1979) Introduction In the vast, decentralized and fragmented terrain of the Internet, the fashion magazine is no longer the default position for the production or consumption of fashion photography. While the majority of creative or innovative fashion photography continues to be produced by professionals for initial publication in