Dismantling and Deconstructing the Structured Gender Codes of Retail Spaces of South African Menswear Fashion
Dismantling and Deconstructing the Structured Gender Codes of Retail Spaces of South African Menswear Fashion

Summary/Abstract: A study was conducted in Johannesburg, South Africa, to explore and investigate the possibilities of designing spaces acting as a conduit in deconstructing and dismantling gender codes in retail spaces of South African menswear fashion. With a focus on sex and gender theorists’ works such as Kaiser (2012), literature on gender, social semiotics, symbols and meanings was reviewed. The study adopted a deductive approach, and followed a qualitative methodological choice. Structured interviews as well as online questionnaire surveys were used to collect data, while coding and descriptive statistics were used to analyse and develop the data. The overall results implicate that participants from the interviews feel that right now, South Africa is ready for gender neutrality in retail spaces. Furthermore, the study confirmed that gender neutrality in fashion has a positive impact on the South African fashion industry. The study suggests further useful ideas on how retail spaces can identify their own evolutionary paths on gender divisions and non-binary fashion in South Africa. The study brings an original contribution, in the sense that gender neutral fashion articulations in South Africa haven’t been fully explored, despite the fact that this has been trending around the world, yet retail spaces still follow gender divisions.

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