Author(s): Wilfred Brandt

WRITING ON FASHION

The first time I encountered the topic of semiotics, it immediately clicked. Maybe it was growing up as a skateboarder, or someone with an interest in obscure music, or film, or zines; but the idea that we communicate on several levels, including an iconography of signs and symbols that carry implicit meanings, made perfect sense. Regardless of whether skateboarding was the root cause, once I became exposed to the Rat Bones logo, the Slime Balls emblem, and later Neil Blender's coffee man and the World Industries pitchfork, I started to amass an internal encyclopedia, cataloguing an arcane iconography (ascribing not just meaning and context but a hierarchy - because skateboarders are often opinionated if not downright snobby, like many of their subcultural siblings).