Dupont, Jean-Claude. The Meaning of Objects: The Poker, in Living in a Material World: Canadian and American Approaches to Material Culture. Gerald L. Pocius, Ed. 

Dupont's model is more suitable for the analysis of technical objects because it heavily focus on the object's formal properties, and how these properties have adapted to different functions  in different cultural contexts.  The model also analyses the various roles, besides the functional, an object  has in its cultural context.   However, I think the model can allow me to clearly define and classify my object; the word "dress" can be very general and can refer to various shapes of clothing.  I will be able to define  "the basic concepts which underlies the existence" of the "dress,"  if I think about dresses' different shapes, and if I compare dresses diachronically and synchronically with other types of garments, 

According to Dupont material culture is connected with spiritual culture.  Therefore,  he examines the presence of the poker (the object he analyzes) in different "rituals of life," and the various uses the tool has as a signifier in popular language.  With my object, the model's last categories  are more difficult to apply because the dress has a different space from the poker to expand its meanings.   Other methodologies also examine material culture's wider social and cultural meanings. Some of these models borrow analytical tools  from semiotics  and might be more useful for my object.