Why Not “Badger Grey”?

Today, our new man on the ground, who would like to be known as David, (anyone would

think he was ashamed to be associated with us) drew our attention to a BBC Report which talked about an American retailer’s colour choice for a plus sized dress.  The report drew attention to a tweet, which, since we’re super helpful we have embedded below.  The store in question had two models of the same dress, one ‘standard fit’ and one plus size.  The former was referred to as “Dark Heather Gray” whereas the latter was referred to as “Manatee Gray”.

 

What the. Plus sized women get “Manatee Grey” while standard sizes are “Dark Heather Grey.” @target #notbuyingit twitter.com/suZen/status/3…

— Susan Clemens (@suZen) April 3, 2013

  The report states that the shop has apologised for the “unintentional oversight” and explained that manatee grey was “a seasonal colour used across [their] product categories, from apparel to home items.” Here at Newsnibbles we have no fashion correspondent, as such, but we see a number of potential problems with this labelling system.  First, Heather is in fact, purple, occasionally pink, but rarely grey, and manatees (who we think are super cute, and should be on more t-shirts) are more of a browny grey. Annie, our Canine correspondent has a very strong sense of fashion, and gave us this comment on the subject:

I fink a better name would have been Weimeraner Gray as they are luffly sleek dogs dat anyone would welcome a comparison too.

Although not experts in fashion, we know there are at least fifty shades of grey, and as such asked our twitter followers if they could name some for us. Savannah provided us with a fantastic list of grey options for consideration:

• Pearl

 

 

• Dove

 

   

• Charcoal

 

   

• Iron

 

   

• Pewter

 

   

• Silver

 

   

• Slate

 

   

• Battleship

 

   

• Anthracite

 

   

• Quartz

 

   

• Steel

 

   

• Dapple

 

   

• Roan

 

   

• Flea Bitten (these last three are horse colours – she really is an expert in grey!)

 

    Or, and this is our suggestion, the dress could just be referred to as “grey”… maybe… which the BBC report tells us the shop has now gone with (Although they spell it “gray” – which is the American spelling). Good for them.  Grey tells it like it is.