What’s Your Nude Bra Campaign for Brown Skin

Perhaps I’m not the target consumer in Tara Raines’ “What’s Your Nude?” campaign (which officially kicks off today) as I prefer bras (and lingerie) in either black, red or various jewel tones, not exactly nude or brown. I guess I’ve given up on this front.

If I want to wear an optic white-on-white outfit, a scandalous, sheer number (ha!) or even my digital camis during drill weekend, I would prefer a seamless set of brown girl nude underwear. However, this reads as another urban beauty legend. Trying to find a high-quality, everyday bra in your specific skin tone treads in “the pursuit of happiness” territory.

In her Women’s Wear Daily interview, Raines revealed, “I was horrified when I found out my mother had been dyeing bras all those years. It’s very disappointing this extra step has to be taken by women of color, and it also compromises the integrity of the product.…Now I understand why my mother was so good at dyeing my tights when I was growing up because there were no brown tights.” Raines’ family members and friends have also dyed their underwear brown!

With that said, I anticipate this social media campaign will arouse the attention of several leading lingerie companies and prompt them to produce “more brown bras” and related undergarments. Besides, what credible company doesn’t want in on the projected 1.1 trillion (by 2015) brown beauty bonanza? We too, along with our fairer counterparts, are choosing lingerie that is “true to hue.”

“What’s Your Nude” is a social media campaign launched to mobilize women fed up over the lack of diversity in bra manufacturing. On February 1, campaign organizers are urging women to contact bra makers and retailers by snail mail, Twitter and Facebook and demand greater representation across new and existing lingerie collections.

Do you think this is a prominent issue in the brown beauty community, or it is “not that serious?”