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declined the offer to take part in the study, as they were busy with a rebranding strategy and had not released new merchandise. The sample size was therefore amended to three designers, with two t-shirts from each designer. Finally a formal request to be a part of the study was sent to the designers via e-mail. The three designers who agreed to take part were sent a formal email, explaining the nature of this research (appendix 1).
The designers were later asked to send images of their t-shirt during the month of June 2016, however, one designer elected to not send a sample. The designer later explained that due to the small size of their business they had not created new t-shirts in 2015. The sample size was amended a final time, to two designers, with two t-shirt samples each. The aim of this research is to understand the how the design process can be analysed as a process of communication. As such, the numerical change in sample size would not affect the findings. The final two brands, Butan and Magents, are located in Johannesburg and Cape Town respectively. A profile of each designer is not detailed in this chapter, as it served as part of the analysis process; however, the contents of the four t-shirt samples are detailed in the subsequent section
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The identity of the institution was identified as the South African retailer Mr Price. Utilising the 2014 Mr Price Annual Report (Blair, 2014) as documentary data, a profile of the company was created. This would later serve as a code for interpreting the meaning of the retailer’s name.
The classification of the name “Mr Price” as a sign was further informed by the Peircean triadic model of signification: of i) representamen (signifier); ii) interpretant (signified); and iii) object (referent) (Peirce, 1932; Chandler, 1994). The analysis first defined the signifier, referent and signified meanings of retail brand name “Mr Price”. As Chapter 3 discussed, the representamen refers the appearance the sign takes (Chandler, 2007) and it is best comprehended in a similar manner to Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1983) signifier. The signifier is a referent of an object that exists in reality (Fourie, 2009). The interpretant refers to the interpreter’s or reader’s interactions with the interpretant and object whereby meaning is abstracted, enabling the sign to signify an image or mental concept of something other than itself (Posner, 2009). This research adopts the term referent in classifying the interpretant (Chandler, 1994; Fourie, 2009). The association between the referent and the signifier reveals the arbitrary, indexical and symbolic signifying properties of the sign.
The name “Mr Price” served as the signifier with its meaning the signified. Using the English language as a code for interpreting the signifier, the signified referent of ‘Mr’ and ‘Price’ was determined. Information derived from the mission statement of Mr Price, served as a code for interpreting the signified, using ‘Mr’ a derived from the word master (Ayto, 2005), and ‘Price’, which refers to monetary value as the referent. The mission statement revealed that the retailer describes itself as a “provider of fashionable merchandise” (Blair, 2014: 15) to “young and youthful customers in the 6-10 LSM range” (Lyne, 2014: 35). The signifier “Mr Price” was therefore established signifying the retailer as the master of fashionable clothing at reasonable prices.
The retailer’s reports were further analysed in order to understand the company’s design ethos;
the report stated that the company employs an in-house trend team who scours the globe in search of trends that could be reinterpreted for the development of clothing ranges (Blair, 2014).
The recreation of trends is not uncommon in the fashion industry as it forms part of the fashion forecasting process (Jackson, 2007; de Wet, 2008). It is common for large retailers to employ forecasters to travel the world in order to source trends for their clothing lines (Jackson, 2007);
this informed the assumption that Mr Price clothing designs reflect global and local youth trends.
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The analysis of the name and surveying of the report and mission statement created a profile of the brand and their design preference. Mr Price was assumed to use design in order to articulate prevailing clothing trends – at an affordable price – to their target market. This was further confirmed by a reading of the Mr Price mission statement which stated that the company constantly engages with their customers in order to create clothes that caters to their needs (Lyne, 2014). This findings from the analysis of the retailer’s name was utilised to contextualise the interpretation of the t-shirt under analysis (Figure 4.1).
Figure 4.1: ‘Bossy’ Tank Top
Source: Mr Price Group, Mr P Summer 2014 Lookbook, 2014
The analysis of text depends upon a context in order to interpret meaning (Eco, 1981). The contextual understanding of Mr Price clothing was derived from the identity of the company and the understanding that the retailer creates clothing that is reflective of current trends. This knowledge was utilised as code for interpreting the relationship between the signifier (the word
“bossy”) and the referent (the English definition of the word). The findings from the identification of the brand informed the first level semiotic analysis of a Mr Price tank top (Figure 4.1). The semiotic methodology utilised for the interpretation of the retailer’s name was adapted into an analytical scheme of typology and layout for the content analysis of the Mr Price tank top (Table. 4.1)
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