About

Beautiful In Every Shade® is a registered trademark,
grassroots empowerment movement, and apparel & education brand established in 2014.

Mission: Decolonizing Beauty, Building Solidarity, and Uniting Women of Color.

Often imitated by other small apparel lines and major corporations, our Classic Tee was the tee that started it all. The insignia/logo designed for the Beautiful In Every Shade® brand by Brooklyn native and Durham, NC based artist Chris Charles, has been seen around the world. It has been worn by celebrities and everyday people alike. It has become a ubiquitous mantra for celebrating beauty across culture.

HISTORY
Beautiful In Every Shade® began as a mantra to celebrate the beautiful spectrum of Black identity in association with the publication of 50 Shades of Black: Sexuality and Skin Tone in the Formation of Black Identity by Carlton Mackey. The mantra quickly caught on and Mackey developed a set of signature workshops and lectures based on the theme. After speaking at high schools and college campuses across the country and after teaming up with fellow creatives Chris Charles and Ross Oscar Knight to host FREE Open Photo Shoots in the United States and abroad, stories from communities outside of the Black community began to pour in. Mackey often recalls a conversation with a young college student from India that broadened his understanding of the relevancy of the message. The young woman spoke of anxiety she was experiencing about her family visiting for graduation and casting judgement on her for how dark she had gotten as a result of hours of exposure to the sun during spring break. She began to speak of how common skin bleaching products were in her community and how much skin tone played into how beauty was perceived.

Stories from the Latin X communities, from Africa, from Afro Indigenous communities began to echo the same narrative. It was clear, colorism (prejudice people experience based on skin tone) and specifically anti-Black racism was a global plague and much more pervasive than just the African-American community.

In September 2015 after the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mackey diverted much of his creative attention away from the work of Beautiful In Every Shade® to develop Black Men Smile®. Driven by what he felt a need for Black men to have a space to “celebrate the way we see ourselves”, Black Men Smile® has now grown into a movement, a brand, and a modality for resistance and radical expressions of self love.

Now with the help of some new creative partners and some powerful Black women, Beautiful In Every Shade® is as fully committed as ever to its mission of Decolonizing Beauty, Building Solidarity, and Uniting Women of Color.

Thank you for your support.

We are Beautiful In Every Shade®