Skims, the shapewear and underwear company Kim Kardashian co-founded in Los Angeles in June 2019, is her contribution to lingerie history. She started it with the Swedish entrepreneur Jens Grede, with Emma Grede as a founding partner, and within six years it was valued at $5 billion. Its central product idea was shapewear sold in a range of skin-tone shades instead of a single beige.
Kimono Intimates, renamed in August 2019
The company nearly launched under another name. It was first announced as Kimono Intimates, and the name drew immediate criticism for treating a Japanese garment as a brand for underwear. The mayor of Kyoto wrote to Kardashian asking her to reconsider. In August 2019 the company was renamed Skims, a month before its first products went on sale.
When the line launched in September 2019 it sold out in about ten minutes, and by the end of that year the company said it had sold more than three million items.
Nine shades of nude
Skims' shapewear comes in nine shades and its range runs from XXS to 5XL. What Skims did was put a wide nude shade range and a wide size range at the center of a celebrity-backed launch, rather than treating them as extensions added later. The products cover shapewear, loungewear, lingerie and accessories, but the shapewear is the core of the business.
The obvious comparison is Spanx, which Sara Blakely founded in 2000 and which made shapewear a household category. Spanx was sold as a fix worn under clothes. Skims was sold as underwear that could also be seen, and its marketing showed it that way.
Kim Kardashian's Skims by valuation
| Date | Reported valuation |
|---|---|
| April 2021 | $1.6 billion |
| January 2022 | $3.2 billion |
| July 2023 | $4 billion |
| November 2025 | $5 billion |
Net sales were reported at about $1 billion for 2024. Earlier versions of this entry printed a year-by-year revenue table from 2019 onward; those figures could not be matched to a source and have been removed.
Fendi, Team USA and the NBA
Partnerships kept the brand in the news. Skims dressed Team USA for the Olympic Games from 2020 to 2022. In October 2021 a co-branded collection with Fendi was estimated to have sold about $3 million in its first ten minutes. In 2023 Skims became the official underwear partner of the NBA and WNBA.
Kardashian's own role is as co-founder and the brand's most prominent face. Earlier accounts said she had cut and sewn her own shapewear for years before founding the company; that story has not been confirmed here and is not repeated. The company remains headquartered in Los Angeles.
Last updated
Sources
- en.wikipedia.org: Skims