Why is everything nude? (Mini Blog)

Black. White. Nude.

If you typed “luxury” or “classy” into your google search bar, most likely there will be hundreds of minimalist pictures with their own renditions of nude. A good bit of influencers that have a “luxury” brand are likely to follow the same nude/minimalism combo.Too much of anything visually - whether that be color, accessories, or even text - is deemed gaudy and seems to have no place in luxury or professional spaces.

Why is that? Minimalist fashion has its roots in arts and architecture as the mantra “less is more” was adopted into fashion in the 1990s (before Tom Ford made his maximalist debut at Gucci). Arguably, It wasn’t until the Great Recession that luxury fashion started to become what we know of today. At the time, it wasn’t “cool” to flaunt your wealth- instead spending money on fewer, high quality items was the way to go. We see that reflected today with the lack of many accessories being a staple of luxury brands.

It makes sense. Quality over quantity right? But what does that mean for people of color? If you go back into your search bar and look up classy aesthetic, there aren’t many faces of color that pop up. Models of different cultural backgrounds are used in advertisements yet with the same minimalist formula to convey luxury. Is that truly diversity?

Black culture or fashion, for example, often airs on the side of maximalism. With vibrant colors, shapes and tones in clothing and even hair - there seems to be no natural place for people of color in luxury culture. Luxury nowadays is fairly bare - stripping down what some would call excess and others identity. Luxury is portrayed or defined uniformly around the world.

Fashion is an expression of self, so what does it mean to tone that down?

Just some food for thought. What do you think? Use the hashtag #AMSluxury on Twitter to let me know your take!