A Visible Ideology: A Document Series in a Women's Clothing Company

Studying corporate documents provides clues to the larger philosophy of the organization. This article explores a sales document redesign that indicates a subtle shift in ideology for a women's clothing company. The corporation uses direct sales to market clothes to a variety of women. In one season, the documents change from relatively outdated designs to more updated, professional layouts. However, the content of the documents changes very little. The author contends that the document redesign indicates a move to a more feminist outlook for the company and uses the concept of ethos to describe how the document design represents a slowly changing ethos for the corporation. A specific content shift towards feminism is, however, less apparent.