A manatee, which comes in gray, at the Wildlife Reserve in Singapore. (Wong Maye-E / Associated…)
Target has apologized for referring to its "plus-size kimono maxi dress" as manatee gray. This is a mammal, after all, that is sometimes referred to as a sea cow.
An irritated shopper tweeted what many saw as an insult. Regular sizes were "dark heather gray," but the plus size got the "manatee" label. It didn't take long for Target to zap the plus-size gaffe from its website and issue an apology.
A spokeswoman told Today.com on Thursday the retailer was sorry for "any discomfort" and never intended to offend. Spokeswoman Jessica Deede noted that this color was "seasonal" at Target, and a check of the website revealed that many products came in manatee gray.
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There are towels, placemats, bath rugs and pillows in the shade. There are also books about manatees in paperback and hardcover.Â
Qualityhams on August 7th, 2017 at 14:06 UTC »
Textile designer here, I've never seen anyone explain this but it's actually an easy mistake. Manatee Gray is a popular color standard and often times websites will list the color standard's name as a style name if the design team doesn't name a style. Additionally, plus sizes are often designed by a specialized textile design team so they would have done their own paperwork.
Heather Gray is a popular gray yarn with specs of black and white spun in to create a nice textured look when knit into fabric.
Basically one team called out Heather Gray on their paperwork and the other team called out the color standard for the specific Gray they wanted. The vendor probably just pulled the same fabric for both for costing purposes and whoever put the input into the website didn't give enough fucks to make them both "Gray".
So no malice intended and it really was just a comedy of errors.
Edit: u/spaghetti335 pointed out below that the cost of each dress was different so the fabrics were not the same in this case.
CluelessMagic on August 7th, 2017 at 12:53 UTC »
So you're telling me the pants I have are the color "lavender" and not "giant purple people eater"?
gonzo_rulz on August 7th, 2017 at 06:01 UTC »
https://mobile.twitter.com/suZen/status/319303226321162240/photo/1
Just found an image showing the colour names. The plus size (manatee grey) is cheaper than the other sizes.
Edit: better quality image.