Abstract
Diverse and complicated trends of fashion design which were initiated at the latter part of the 20th century have been evolving in the cultural framework of Postmodernism. At this point of time, Poststructuralism, with its aims to interpret and understand modern fashion design, is a new system of thinking that reveals the contradictory aspects of rationalistic Western philosophy and accepts uncertainty and disorder as they exist. The main purpose of this study is to examine the various theoretic systems and characteristic concepts of Poststructuralism, and supply a new cognizance frame to understand the processes of fashion design with free and varied notions of deconstruction and generation, in place of the former systematic and consistent interpretation of meaning. Concerning fashion design, analysis of theories and analysis of contents. By probing and examining deconstruction theory, 'I'-other theory, textual theory, and nomadic thinking, the concepts of cognizance are classified into Nonboundariness, Otherness, and Textualism. The theoretic foundation for this analysis and classification is supplied by Derrida's deconstructional philosophy, Lacan's mental analysis, Bartes's textual theory, Deleuze's change and generation theory, together with other theories of Poststructuralism. In analysis of theories, a cognizance frame is proposed that can categorize the concepts, derived from various theories of Poststructuralism, as traits expressed in fashion design.