Is inclusivity the solution?
I recently experimented with coffee dyeing in a YouTube video. What began as a fun DIY project soon turned sour, leaving me with deep feelings of rage and frustration at the fashion industry’s penchant for creating clothing only for white bodies.
The culprit? A mesh bodysuit from Calvin Klein purchased at a PVH sample sale in 2017. The mesh detailing on the bodysuit came in a nude colour which of course wasn’t nude for me. A black woman. I bought it anyways.
In three years, I wore it only once not because it didn’t fit well or look good on me, but because the intended nude effect wasn’t the same against my dark skin tone and as somewhat of a perfectionist this really bothered me. Rather than donate it or throw it out, I decided to attempt dyeing the mesh to match my skin tone using a natural dyeing technique. Enter coffee dyeing. Needless to say, the experiment went wrong, leaving my beloved bodysuit in ruins (find out how, here).
At first, I laughed it off. Sometimes you take a risk and it doesn’t work out and I’m okay with that. The longer I sat with my ruined garment however, the angrier I got. “Why didn’t the mesh come in a colour with some semblance to my skin tone?” I did a quick search online to confirm that the bodysuit in question did indeed come in only one “nude” colour. It did.
I wondered why fibre technology hadn’t yet yielded fabric that takes on the skin tone of the wearer. Perhaps this isn’t possible, or perhaps it’s because difficulty matching skin tone in fashion is a problem that mostly afflicts people of colour (POC) and as with most problems exclusive to POCs, no real solutions are ever investigated or invested in.
I appreciate all the progressive and inclusive fashion brands that have listened to the frustrations of POCs and now offer their “nude” clothing in a variety of skin tones. I applaud those who have stepped up to fill this gap in the market, producing nude clothing exclusively for POCs. But I wonder if that’s enough. The truth is this: the range in skin tone is so wide that no one brand can ever truly be all inclusive. To attempt this would not only be unprofitable but also environmentally unsustainable.
My thought is this: Wouldn’t we be better off adopting universality as our primary concept in fashion in place of inclusivity? Investing in innovative fibre technologies that provide a true universal solution to fashion’s problems instead of settling for a wide range of nude coloured band aid solutions in the name of inclusivity?
