The paper is devoted to the research of contemporary fashion vocabulary in the English language in cognitive and traditional lexicological aspects with regard to extralinguistic factors that influenced its formation. During the 20th century fashion spread from dress to various complementary accessories and other elements that constitute style and image. The role of image at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries, its accessibility resulting from fashion industrialization lead to the rise of the notion of fashion in the conceptual sphere of contemporary man. This fact has been reflected in the English language. Now fashion vocabulary makes the part of the English language picture of the world. Style, dress and clothes are central semantic components of the notion of fashion and are most frequently used in fashion definitions. Fashion is treated as a social phenomenon based on the perception of certain styles in dress as relevant for the current moment. It correlates with style. Fashion as a specific world and a sphere of activity is currently associated with such phenomena as creativity and industry. In fashion dialectically opposite urges of a human being toward individuality and social adaptation interact. The new is an integral element and the driving force of fashion. Objects of fashion have semantic nature that is reflected in language. Clothes and accessories are viewed as carrying non-verbal messages about social status, age, sex, interests, occupation, cultural and political preferences of their owner. In high fashion the meanings ascribed to clothes are verbalized be means of the collection and brand names. Basic fashion trends of the 20th century as well as the dress codes that developed by the end of the 20th century are semantic by nature. Fashion styles like flapper, the New Look or hippy symbolize a certain step in the cultural development, as well as a certain individual's ideology, that is relevant to the idea of the signified in the C.S. Peirce's sign theory. The ideology and cultural preferences are expressed on the material level by means of wearing certain clothes and accessories that are relevant to the concept of the signifier according to the sign theory. Verbal names ascribed to these "sign" items of clothing and accessories function as interpretants - the third component in C.S. Peirce's sign theory that represents a link between the signified and the signifier. Morphological, internal and occasional derivation, word combinations (up to ten constituents in a word-combination) and borrowings are the nomination devices represented in the fashion vocabulary. The means of morphological derivation are affixation, truncation, combining, acronyms, telescopy and reduplicaton. Within fashion lexis derivation based upon the reinterpretaton of the parts of words (bikini > trikini), lexicalization of prefixes and using words and their parts (-tex) as affixes are represented. Conversion, compression, metaphoric nomination and meaning melioration are the means of internal derivation. The semantics of some lexical units in fashion lexis reflects social and cultural changes that took place during the 20th century. Lexical units of the French origin gradually yield to the ones of the English origin in the sphere of fashion. Nevertheless, the names of Paris-based official fashion institutions and their acronyms still remain French. The use of lexical units with axiological semantics is characteristic of fashion texts. Lexical units with inherent evaluative connotation are used as well as the ones that acquire evaluative meaning in the fashion context. Here belong lexical units with the general meaning fashion, fashionable - unfashionable, as well as the units with temporal meaning, that denote correlation or the lack of correlation between the objects described and the current moment. The units with temporal meaning are used to correlate fashion objects with a certain historical moment (century - decade - season - month), a certain season of the year or the time of the day. The notions OLD - NEW produce axiological opposition. The concept of the NEW and lexical units representing the meanings of present and future acquire positive connotation in fashion context. Negative meaning of the notion OLD (past) is neutralized when it correlates with the words that have pantemporal meaning, like classic, vintage, retro, nostalgic. When the correlation with the past is viewed as a sign of the classic, it is evaluated positively. Nomination of colour in the fashion context occurs by means of suffixation, associative nomination, word-combination, adjective meaning extension. To describe colour the elements -hued, -toned, -tinted, -coloured, -colour, -tone in combination with the colour-adjectives are often used. Colour adjectives in fashion texts are modified according to the seasons of the year, to colour warmth, depth, saturation, transparency, homogeneity, iridescence, as well as colour compatibility, emotional impact on the viewer, associative and metaphoric description of the colour. Further research may be focused on the study of the mutual influence of world languages in the sphere of fashion, on the peculiarities of assimilation of borrowed lexical units, proper names and acronyms by the English fashion vocabulary, as well as on further research of the semiosis of the material culture articles.
