Changing the ‘nude’ norm in lingerie
Fashion28.04.2025
Chantal Carter has always had a passion for fashion.
Raised in Montreal, she remembers Saturdays spent with her mom – who worked in the rag trade, the city’s historic garment district – exploring sample sales and unearthing exclusive clothing pieces.
“We had everything first,” she recalled, laughing. “When the factories would open and sell their samples, we would get our hands on what wasn’t even out yet.”
That early introduction to fashion laid the groundwork for a career in styling, which eventually brought Carter to Toronto. But it was behind the scenes – working on photo shoots and prepping models – where she began to notice something: nude undergarments never came in shades that matched women of colour.
It was a problem, she realized, she had also been battling her entire life.
“I would wait and wait to see if the latest ‘nude’ or lace trend included me,” she says. “But it never did. Nude always meant beige, never brown.”
She remembers one moment vividly – painting a white bra and underwear set with fabric paint to try and replicate her skin tone.
“It was hard and crusty and uncomfortable,” she says, “but it gave me the look I wanted. And that’s when I thought, ‘No one should have to do this.’”
Creating change
That frustration planted the seed for a lingerie line offering bras and underwear in various skin tones, specifically for women of colour. But turning that seed into a business wasn’t easy.
“There was so much fear,” Carter admitted. “It sounded so simple that I thought people would think I was crazy – or worse, someone would steal the idea.”
However, in 2017, Love & Nudes officially launched with a crowdfunding campaign that was met with enthusiasm.
With two distinct styles of wire-free bras and underwear available in colours like Espresso, Knockout Nutmeg, Butterscotch Beauty and Honey Love, Love & Nudes was giving women more than just lingerie, added Carter.
“The product is a vessel for self-love, for loving who we are, and empowerment,” she said. “I wanted to create a product that celebrated Black women and women of colour because a lot of the time we are put in the back, not celebrated, or seen.”
Since launching, the company has grown, evolved, and weathered its share of challenges.
Like many business owners, Carter faced global supply chain disruptions during COVID, making it hard to fulfill growing demand.
But that disruption eventually brought her full circle back to Montreal, where she produced her second collection on the same street her mother once worked on.
“I didn’t even realize it until I saw the street sign,” she said. “I watched that whole sector vanish when I was young. Now I have an opportunity to bring some of it back.”
Expanding the brand
As Carter continued to pour her heart and soul into Love & Nudes, she realized that the brand had the power to do more than offer inclusive lingerie – it could also serve as a vehicle for health education and empowerment.
“I had heard this stat that Black women have a 40 per cent higher mortality rate than white women when it comes to breast cancer, and that really stuck with me,” she said. “So often the face of breast cancer is a white woman, the charts and graphs online are of white bodies, and it hit me that we could help change that.”
That idea sparked the Stage Zero Collection – a bra that helps people better understand what breast cancer looks and feels like, especially on darker skin tones.
“We worked with an oncologist who works in the Black community to create these prototypes that would give people a tactile feel of what the lumps and bumps feel like and how discolouration presents,” she said. “We hear it described, but understanding how it feels is very different.”
While the Stage Zero Collection is still a prototype, Carter hopes to see it in doctors’ offices and medical institutions to one day help both patients and medical professionals better understand the impact of breast cancer on women of colour.
As for Love & Nudes, Carter says she is excited to see where this journey takes her next and how she can continue to spark change in the industry.
“The tagline I use so often is I want women to own their tone, which means so much more than just clothing,” she said. “It means owning your story, history, skin tone, whatever colour it is because that makes us uniquely us.”
