Abstract
The purpose of this study Is to reinterpret sexuality represented in modern fashion with the conception of plural sexuality from post-structuralism in socio-semiotic approach. It consists of two parts.: The first part provides the theoretical background and the methodological framework of this study. The second part ultimately accomplishes this study by empirical research, which is to infer plural sexuality articulated with fashion images in men's and women's popular fashion magazines in Korea since 2000 and sexual ideology signified in modern fashion. In this part the theoretical background was focused on the conception of sexuality on the basis of Foucault's idea, and then the framework for this study was made up from socio-semiotic perspective. The conception of sexuality in Foucauldian post-structural idea maintains the view of plural sexuality, which floats by power relationship between dominant and oppositional discourses in a specific historical context. Socio-semiotics suggests a contextual methodology to analyze the phenomena of material culture by articulating the range of material objects with that of ideology. The socio-semiotic model applied to sexuality represented in fashion is the framework of classifying into the several versions of fashion images from fashion as a material object and then inferring sexual ideology codified in them. In addition, three stages of producer/object/user in socio-semiotics were revised into 'dominant sexuality' with mainstream fashion out of dominant discourses,'oppositional sexuality' to create anti-fashion from oppositional discourses of subculture, and 'alternative sexuality' to be appropriated to dominant discourses by the mix of mainstream fashion and anti-fashion.