:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/VRDREQFEGZHK7G7TIED5EIGJD4.JPG "The heated rhetoric over the migrant standoff in midtown Manhattan obscured a stark reality")
Back in 2019, Kim Kardashian launched her renowned shapewear brand, Skims.
The multibillion-dollar clothing line, which sells undergarments, loungewear, and so much more, is the most successful of all of the Kar/Jenners’ business ventures.
Speaking about the success of her brand in an episode of Hulu’s The Kardashians, Kim gushed about its worldwide recognition and compared it to the likes of Apple and Nike.
“I’m obsessed with Skims. It’s my baby,” she said. “All of the big banks and VCs, everyone just says, ‘Apple, Nike, Skims.’ We’re in that conversation, and it makes me really proud.”
While several fans disagreed with Kim’s take, there’s no doubt that Skims — which was valued at $3.2 billion last year — has far succeeded the standard level of success when compared to her and her sisters’ other businesses.
And after Skims’s latest campaign for Valentine’s Day, fans have been left super impressed by Kim’s “genius” marketing move.
If you missed it, Kim’s Valentine’s collection featured two of the most prominent breakout stars from HBO’s The White Lotus: Beatrice Grannò and Simona Tabasco, who portrayed the fiery duo Mia and Lucia.
Kim, like many others, watched and absolutely loved the latest season of The White Lotus, which has received tons of critical acclaim. “I watched The White Lotus and had to have my girls!” Kim wrote on Instagram as she shared photos of Bea and Simona posing in their Skims garments.
“Couldn’t have been a smarter move,” one person commented. “This is what I call brilliant ahead of the curve marketing. Love this!!” echoed another, with a third labeling the entire thing “iconic.”
And it’s this reaction that prompted one TikTok user, @kardashian_kolloquium, to break down exactly how Kim has capitalized on huge cultural moments for the benefit of her brand.
“I would say in the past year or two, Kim has really been using Skims as a sort of cultural archive,” the user begins.
Kourtney and Megan were constantly snapped out and about with their respective partners, Travis Barker and Machine Gun Kelly, and memorably gained tons of attention when a very notable tongue-kissing photo from the 2021 VMAs went viral.
And wasting no time at all, Kim featured the duo in a Skims campaign that very same month, with the photos playing into the exact image that Kourtney and Megan had become known for at that time.
Months later, when the subject of nostalgia became a prominent one on social media, Kim called on the likes of Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Candice Swanepoel for Skims’s “Icons” collection.
Breaking all of this down, @kardashian_kolloquim says in a TikTok, “We got Megan Fox during her moment, and the ‘iconic girls’ at a time in culture when we were really defining the fact that nostalgia was driving social media trends.”
“[Kim is] turning Skims into a medium in and of itself — a blank slate where different stories, representations, memories, moments can be placed,” she explains. “At some point, this will serve a function in the future of looking back on Skims campaigns and having a sense of what was culturally valued at the time.”
In the comments, several TikTok users expressed their thoughts on the entire thing, once again branding Kim a “genius.”
“she’s such a genius for this,” one person wrote. “Her marketing team is smart,” someone else said, while another echoed, “The marketing is so intelligent.”
“Love this!! Kim said in an early season I think that she’s obsessed with archiving everything and memories so this makes so much sense,” one more user pointed out.
