‘Nude’ has often been used to describe a light beige, but for many people, this is not the case. Christian Louboutin is revolutionizing the world of fashion with the expansion of his flesh-toned shoe collection. While this change is obvious and overdue for many, the world of fashion is just now catching up.
The line will now encompass a nude shade for every woman, and while he is not the first to expand upon society’s definition of the ‘nude,’ Louboutin is the first to do so on a high-fashion platform.
Louboutin’s Nude Collection originally had five shades, but was recently expanded to include seven. As explained on the company’s Instagram, this change was done in an attempt “to create a spectrum of seven suited to any skin tone, from porcelain to deep chocolate.”
The line ranges in price from $595 to $875, based on the style. Each shade comes in four designs: a pointed-toe ballet flat, a pointed-toe pump, an open-toe pump with a t-strap and a d’Orsay pump with a pointed toe.
And Louboutin is not the only brand to highlight this issue.
BuzzFeed released a video entitled “Black Women Try on Nude Fashion” in May 2015. The video consists of four women of color trying on ‘nude’ lipsticks, bras, leotards and tights. All of the items they tried on were beige, and far too light to be considered ‘nude’ for their skin tones.
Beauty YouTuber Jackie Aina went into detail about the struggle women of color have to endure when finding nude lipsticks. She opened the video wearing a nude shade that was clearly not her color to show how wrong the look can go.
“I love nudes,” Aina said. “When they’re done right. And because we got color on us, their nude is not always our nude.”
Maybelline released “The Buffs” collection in 2014, which can help fix the issue that Aina described. This collection consists of ten skin-toned, “born-to-be naked” colors, ranging from light to dark. Staying true to idea of nudity, there are fairer shades with names such as “Bare All” and “Nude Lust,” and a deeper shade called “Espresso Exposed.”
Finding nude-colored underwear is also a struggle for women of color. Businesswoman Ade Hassan decided to change this and designed the lingerie line Nubian Skin.
“Nubian Skin is a brand of lingerie and hosiery for woman of color,” Hassan said in a online video. “I came up with the concept probably around four years ago. Mainly it was brought out of frustration — from me. I love fashion and lingerie is sort of the foundation of an amazing outfit … and a major frustration I had was if I wanted to wear something sheer or in light color, it’s very, very hard to find something that blended seamlessly underneath.”
The line features a variety of styles in shades ranging from light to dark — Café Au Lait, Caramel, Cinnamon and Berry — with prices comparable to those of Victoria’s Secret.
The nude trend is everywhere, and from makeup to clothes, it’s hard to escape. No one should feel like they can’t participate because of their skin tone, and these influential brands are not only changing the definition of the color nude, but changing the way diversity is handled in the fashion and beauty industries.