Nude as a colour

Photographer: Paul Stuart. Model : myself

It has come up a few times, so I am not saying anything new here, but I am sure you must be aware of the nuances of a word such as 'nude' in relation to colour.
In fashion 'nude' is used to denote shades ranging from champaign to beige. You may remember when Michelle Obama, the American First Lady, attended a state dinner in 2010 wearing a design by Naeem Khan, who described the dress as 'nude'. The Associated Press reported it as being 'flesh coloured' and of course this caused a stir. Whose flesh, exactly? Not Mrs Obama's. So the dress colour was changed to 'champaign'.
Why make a fuss over this? Because it is not a trivial matter. By saying 'nude' and meaning a colour that approximates the skin tone of white men and women, we are guilty of ethnocentrism and plain racism.
'Nude' should embrace different shades of beige, from light to dark, in order to match different skin tones.
Take 'nude' shoes for example. Christian Louboutin has recently introduced a new collection of 'nude' shoes that matches different skin tones. The only problem is that they are hardly affordable, as they begin at £400 - not everyone can pay so much for a pair of heels.

The Louboutin collection. Photo: Google images

Nail polish is next. Nude nail polish is now available in different skin tones. But nude tights or stockings are still very light coloured. They are meant to be invisible on your skin. That surely depends on the colour nuance of your own skin tone.
So no,  it's not just a matter of semantics. It does matter that 'nude' should not be exhausted by just one shade of light beige.
As some writers have pointed out, fashion designers ought to recognise the diversity of the wearers of their designs. It feels uncomfortable to many women of colour that there is no 'nude' that matches their skin tone, it's again to do with being regarded as invisible. That's why a campaign, "What's your Nude", was started to address precisely this lack of visibility of women of colour in fashion. Lingerie is another category of clothing that needs to pick up on different shades of nude - it has not yet.
I mean, what is a 'nude' bra?
What I am really questioning here is the assumption of neutrality of language. There is no such a thing.
As postcolonial writer and thinker Frantz Fanon said, "To speak a language is to take on a culture".

Comment by a reader
The following comment was sent to me by one of my blog readers, The DarkWolf:
"It's not trivial, nor is language neutral. The semantics of word choice reinforce "normalization" of ideas and underlying concepts.
For example, the distinction between "nude", "flesh" and "peach" are appreciable, not only due to the perception of "race" but also to the sexualization of the underlying concepts. Just as the Crayola company made an official statement that "Indian Red" was a reference to a clay-earth tone FROM India rather than a reference to North American native peoples (a downer for me, actually, as a half-Salish kid I loved the colour name!)
I do take your meaning though... When Michelle Obama wears a peach-toned dress it gets described as "flesh" or "nude"... hopefully that merely signifies a reporter oblivious to the connotations of race... However, I have yet to hear of a Caucasian woman in a light coffee coloured dress which gets described as "mulatto"... thankfully... "

Thank you The DarkWolf!