Why I Don't Get Nude

I don't have a problem with naked.  I like to think that I am free and confident in my own skin. Sometimes clothes can be a veneer, masking my much loved imperfections (a tummy that reveals a love of wings, home made pizza, cheese, white wine and cake), a carapace that can be restricting and confining.

I do, however, have a problem with nude. The very particular colour palette that is often used to describe an indistinct pale pink, the "in" shade for this season's frothy dresses in a middling shade of cappuccino that falls somewhere in between faint tan and English rose. I have been taught that words on their own have no power: it is the meaning we ascribe to them that weigh them down. Nude, therefore, as touted on the pages of Grazia and emblazoned in glossy Glamour is meant to create the illusion of flesh toned nakedness. I have long known that this nude is not meant to refer to my flesh. Nude bras and "natural toned" tights had already disabused me of my preconception. This was, however,  recently brought to the attention of mainstream society by the US press.

The polemic arose out of the fact that Indian designer Naeem Khan designed the dress featured above for Michelle Obama  and described it as a "startling silver sequin, abstract, floral nude strapless gown". I was first of all perturbed that one dress required so many descriptive aadjectives. Then it appeared that the word nude had been added almost as an afterthought, to impress the fashion mafia by stamping the dress with this season's magic word to ensure automatic entry into the stylistic megaclub. For the record, the dress, by any stretch of the imagination was far from nude- maybe a jaundiced nude but not healthy fashionable nude. No need.

Naeem (who really should know better) subsequently described the dress as "champagne coloured" but this probably caused it to lose some of its je ne sais quoi- although not to me because I love champagne.  He did not escape unscathed, however. This ignited a debate about the use of the word nude and whether this was legitimate. Some sections of the press even asked whether the word was unassumingly racist.

 A word cannot be racist without a context, whether historical or current. This debate on legitimacy misses the point. There is nothing wrong with the word nude. There can be nothing wrong with a words on its own. There is nothing wrong with developing a colour palette the effect of which is to provide the illusion of nakedness. It isn't even a question of the appropriateness of the word when the colour is used on a darker skinned person. The word nude is only the affirmation of the status quo- that I can never walk into Marks and Spencers and find the correct shade of skin toned tights and I have to purchase them on Sundays in Lewisham market,  that I can never purchase Clinique at Boots because they don't sell my shade so I need to buy higher priced Mac and Bobby Brown and that the skin toned bra in the Next multipack looks very weird against my skin.

In that respect, there is nothing shocking about nude. What is shocking is how little progress we have made in convincing multinationals of the power of the black pound (or dollar). If, we had, I am sure that there would be multiple shades of nude, reflecting a long list of different shades- from brown to coffee to caramel to beige to espresso. Getting down to the bare bones of it, this is not to underestimate the power of words. It is not a ridiculous suggestion that the word nude reinforces the status quo- the power of suggestion is insidious. And that's the naked truth.