Skims
Kim Kardashian and the shaping of culture
BY BELINDA LUSCOMBE
At this juncture, most people have already made up their minds about Kim Kardashian. They’ve either decided she’s an early nepo baby with zero talent who has ridden her sex appeal and shamelessness to fame and fortune and can safely be ignored, or she’s a once-in-a-generation mix of beauty and determination who hustled her way up from being Paris Hilton’s assistant with her weapons-grade detector for cultural relevance, and can move any needle she pushes.
Until recently, the one person who didn’t seem to have quite made up her mind about Kim Kardashian was Kim Kardashian. Her uncertainty is reflected in the slew of businesses she started, including two beauty lines, a jewelry collection, multiple perfumes, Kimojis, and a mobile game, most of which were profitable for a season, but never really stuck. “At the beginning, when I didn’t really understand where my career was going because I was just kind of winging it, I would do licensing deals with a lot of different companies that would contradict themselves, like a cupcake brand with a weight-loss pill at the same time,” she says. Skims, which first offered underwear and shapewear but expanded into loungewear, swimwear, tees, and dresses, has changed that—and the way the business world sees her. Talking about her most successful solo venture, Kardashian seems relieved. “I feel like, OK, I did it.”
Founded in late 2019, Skims says it made $500 million last year, 25% more than projected and 80% more than it made in 2021, which was up 90% from the year before. So far, 2023 has been a down year for underwear sales, but buoyant for Skims; CEO Jens Grede, who co-founded the company with his wife Emma and Kardashian, says that sales of its intimates increased 86% year over year in April. Investors have noticed; in its latest round of funding in January 2022, the brand, which is privately held, was valued at $3.2 billion, double what it had been valued just nine months prior. (That’s $2 billion higher than either her sister’s Kylie Cosmetics or 2000s-era shapewear icon Spanx ever climbed.) Grede says he fields offers from outside investors weekly. Arguably, nothing any single Kardashian has done has been this astonishingly successful since their dad Robert took on the legal defense of O.J. Simpson.
There are subtle signs of the company’s impact, like a surge of copycats being dubbed as #Skimsdupes on social media feeds. There are less subtle signs too; the company is testing new brand extensions, such as a foray into bridal wear and, Kardashian exclusively
