Tahlia Gray
Founder of Sheer Chemistry
Tahlia Gray / Photography by Jerrell Trulove
After spending her childhood in Sydney, her teens in London and student years between Birmingham and Rio, it was in New York that Tahlia Gray says she “found my soul.”
However, what she couldn’t find in the city was a pair of tights in her shade of nude! She’d moved there for a graduate job at an investment bank and had hoped to find more products designed for women of colour. But when the most cosmopolitan city in the world failed to offer up hosiery for brown skin tones, Tahlia started to wonder if she needed to create the tights herself.
She says: “I thought, how hard can this be? I wanted to create a brand that celebrates the diverse beauty of women of colour. I wanted women that look like me to feel valid and worthy of a quality product that was made with us in mind.”
Her first step was to create a database of shades. Using makeup as a reference point, she looked into brands that cater to a diverse range of skin tones, like MAC and Fashion Fair. Through conversations with people working at makeup counters and surveying hundreds of women of colour about their buying patterns, she discovered which tones were the best sellers.
After landing on five shades that she could send to a manufacturer to replicate, Tahlia thought carefully about how they would be labelled. “Traditionally, brown shades are called things like ‘caramel’ or ‘chocolate,’ which don’t really speak to the multidimensional nature of women of colour,” she says. “I wanted the shade names to tell more of a story about who we are.”
She ended up with five names that reflect her well-travelled target customer, as well as her own international background: Nairobi Sunrise, Havana Glow, Rio Romance, Parisian Dream and New York Soul (Tahlia’s own shade; a tribute to the city where the idea was born). “We are women who love to travel, have seen the world and are from many different cultures,” she explains. “We believe that beauty is about where you’ve been and where you come from, as well as where
you’re going.”
Sheer Chemistry’s international and cosmopolitan persona made the W Hotel London a great brand to partner with for its launch in June 2017. The hotel sold the tights for six months, helping Sheer Chemistry gain thousands of customers from 19 different countries. Since then, Tahlia has also partnered with makeup brands Bobbi Brown and NARS for events, and from November this year the tights will be available in John Lewis.
Throughout her journey so far, Tahlia has loved seeing her customer’s reactions when they find tights in their shade of nude for the first time. “People get really emotional and tell me about how self-conscious they’ve felt since childhood because they weren’t able to find tights to match their skin tone,” she says.
“Even though it is a simple, everyday product, it has such an impact on how women feel about themselves. By making nude tights an option, I want women of colour to feel seen, celebrated and gorgeous in their own skin.”
Interview by Kate Hollowood
