Fashion faux-pas: Target apologizes for ‘manatee grey’ plus-size dress

Target officials insist they didn't mean to offend, but, boy, did they ever.

An angry shopper recently tweeted a screen-captured image of a Target maxi dress selling online.

The grey shade of the dress in regular sizes was called "dark heather grey."

The same shade for the plus-size version? "Manatee grey."

The story quickly went viral, with Target immediately moving into damage-control mode. The retailer removed the offending term from its website, issued an apology,and noted that "manatee grey" was a seasonal shade at the store that many products, not just offending plus-size dresses, came in.

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"We apologize for any discomfort this might have caused and are working to update the name of the dress to reflect Dark Heather Gray," Target spokesman Joshua Thomas tells Forbes. "This was an unfortunate oversight and we’ll take it into consideration moving forward."

Target also apologized directly to Susan Clemens, the original tweeter, and to all its Twitter followers.

On the Target site, the colour label on the plus-size dress now simply reads: "grey."

"@Target handled it really well," Clemens tweets. "I'm still a big fan."

"It's an inadvertent thing that Target did but what it tapped into is something that's real for a lot of people," Clemens tells ABC News.

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"I think, though, there's a bigger story here in the way that it resonated with people because they are concerned with how they're being talked about in the world at large, even if that wasn't the intent here."

According to Thomas, there were two different teams of buyers responsible for the 'missy' and plus-size product lines, and the teams didn’t coordinate when they entered the product information. One team apparently used the colour’s official name, while the other eyeballed it," he tells Forbes.

"Manatee gray is actually a seasonal color that is used across product categories on Target.com, from apparel items to home items," Target spokesperson Jessica Deede tells Fox News.

"This was an unintentional oversight. We will take this opportunity to learn."