Fast Fashion, Fast Shopping: a semiotic approach to practices of consumption of young consumers

In this article I will sketch the first results of a research I am conducting, which is still in progress at Bologna University in Rimini The research started three years ago and is divided in several steps. The step I am describing here was called Fashion Shopping Awareness Project. The aim of the inquiry was to answer two questions: 1. Is semiotics an useful tool to study consumption behavior, in particular, fashion shopping? This implies to answer a critical question about the semiotic method: what is it and how are we to use it? 2. Which role does fashion shopping play in that complex process we can define ‘dressing behavior’, a process that, in its turn, is just a part of social life in general? I will treat shortly, in this communication, the question of method. A complete discussion will be published with the final outcome of the research. I will then present the first results of the research my staff and I conducted with my class from January to April 2007, a so called ‘basic inquiry’ on the data we have just collected.