Androgynous fashion is a growing trend as we see more and more adopters such as celebrities, influencers, and everyday people, especially men following the trend. This is also reflected in the high-end fashion market and runways of luxury fashion houses (Madsen, 2022). A review of the literature related to androgynous fashion, fashion theory, gender roles in marketing and men’s fashion adoption shows several gaps. The current literature provides many theories for how fashion diffuses and is adopted (Sproles, 1974) and the influence of celebrity culture and fashion influencers on fashion trends (Nouri, 2018). However, there is no conclusive literature that can explain the phenomena that is occurring with male adoption of androgynous fashion. This study explores the male androgynous fashion phenomenon within the New Zealand context. To tackle this research a qualitative exploratory study with twelve semi-structured interviews was used to bridge this gap in the literature. This research follows an interpretivist paradigm using inductive reasoning to allow the themes to emerge from the data set and was analysed with thematic analysis. From the analysis several models were proposed to illustrate the phenomena of male androgynous fashion adoption.

The findings indicate male adopters have a distinct desire for self-expression through their fashion. The findings also indicate that there are other factors outside of the participant’s self-expression which have had an indirect effect on their adoption of androgynous fashion. These consist of changing social values, celebrity, and pop culture influences. The study raises several theoretical and managerial implications relating to male adoption of androgynous fashion. This thesis contributes to the literature on androgyny, risk mitigation when adopting androgynous fashion, and proposes a male androgynous fashion adoption model that captures various elements of the phenomenon.