Sustainability on display: Semiotic analysis of sustainable fashion visual merchandising

This study aims to explore how sustainability in fashion supply chain from websites of mid-to-high-end fashion brands reflects in their window displays from the perspective of semiotics. On the one hand, window display is an important part of visual merchandising. On the other hand, transparency of information of sustainable supply chain of fashion brands is increasingly important in the establishment of brand image, and consumers pay more attention to information related to brand sustainability. However, there are few studies on how to express sustainability in fashion supply chain on websites through visual merchandising of the window displays of fashion brands. This research enriches the theory in this field by studying the windows as a medium for sustainable information transmission of fashion brands. The main research question of this study is: how sustainability in fashion supply chain is reflected in the mid-to-high-end brand fashion window displays from the perspective of semiotics? Informed by a literature review on visual merchandising and sustainable fashion supply chain, this study adopts a semiotic analysis method to analyze the seven windows of mid-to-high-end brands communicating sustainability. The author applies the semiotic model proposed by Roland Barthes (Barthes, 1968; Chandler, 1994) to the window system to generate “Model of Semiotic Analysis” as well as summarizes how the investigated fashion window displays use visual merchandising methods to express their themes. According to the semiotic model, the author provides analysis based on the three aspects of the visual symbols of the window system, the visual merchandising method and sustainability in fashion supply chain from websites. Findings suggest that the answer to the research question is two-fold. First, the sustainability in fashion supply chain from the perspective of environment and consumer service are predominantly reflected in the website and window design of sustainable fashion brands. Second, in the window with the theme of expressing sustainable supply chain, a) prop is the most popular visual object, followed by texture, and b) rhythm is the most popular visual merchandising method, followed by line