The fifth issue of Viscose explores fashion’s multifaceted retail spaces and cultures. With the evolution of shopping in the long 20th century as its focus, the issue looks at the shop as a central nexus where communities are continuously produced and re-imagined through commerce, and always in response to larger societal changes.

With a special attention to the role of fashion retail within urban spatial politics (particularly relating to gentrification and surveillance), the issue seeks out histories of projects—often developed with or by artists—that have embraced the shop as a medium of both possibility and contestation.