the new nude
Last week it was announced that Christian Louboutin is coming out with a new collection: the revamped nude collection. The idea behind it is that every woman, regardless of her skin color, can wear a pair of nude-colored heels. The collection now consists of five shades, and two more shades will be added in the coming years. Sounds like good news to me, but due to an article I later read on HP/De Tijd I realized that it is actually totally ridiculous that such a collection hasn't existed for a long time and especially, that the word “nude” is a very strange word.
Journalist Lisa Bouyeure wrote that piece in response to a stir on Viva.nl, in which the editorial team listed reasons why it is a good idea to date a dark-skinned man. One of the points she makes is the following: “the assumption that everyone is white – readers, consumers, or people in general – is so pervasive in the Western world that it hardly stands out.” According to her, this is partly because magazine editorial teams “have a glaring lack of color.” And I found that quite confronting because she is right.
The Amayzine editorial team is completely white, and female. The latter may not be so strange considering we write for women, but the former is certainly unnecessary. We, along with many other editorial teams, write from our own perspective, but that perspective is a bit narrow and limited. And not only in terms of skin color, but also in terms of sexual preference. I can endlessly write articles about dating, love, sex, and everything that comes with it, but in those articles, I always talk about women who are attracted to men, and vice versa. And I actually find that quite silly of myself; why do I always assume that all Amayzine readers are heterosexual?
Lisa Bouyeure further notes that it is absurd that all stores talk about skin-colored tights and that this skin color is that of the white woman, “compare it to hair color, flower color, or Jelly Bean color.” And Christian Louboutin thought so too. As the first designer, he sees that there is no such thing as a universal nude color, but that women's skin can vary significantly from east to west. I'm not sure how and if we can immediately apply that with our editorial team, but the awareness of it is already a step in the right direction. And you see, a lot of good comes from Christian Louboutin heels.
