That is what makes it such a special experience to see a cultural empire beginning to shake. Not collapse — wobble. Similar to how you watch a Jenga tower that is worth a five-billion dollars, and everyone on the internet is holding a block, all you can do is wait until someone gets pulled. That is exactly the energy surrounding SKIMS and Kim Kardashian right now in 2026, and honestly? It is fascinating to watch.
I want to be clear at the start of this paper, it is not a takedown piece. It is an appropriate examination of what is going on with one of the most discussed fashion brands of the past ten years and whether the discourse surrounding it has ever begun to change. Due to the reason that something is changing. You can feel it.
The Empire Is Still Standing (Just With More Cracks)
Let us start with the numbers because they matter. SKIMS and Kim Kardashian have built something genuinely impressive. By 2025, the brand was worth $5 billion. In 2024, it dragged in about 1 billion dollars in net sales. In September 2025, NikeSKIMS released a collection titled Spring 2026, and advertised it through the NikeSKIMS collab, which included such athletes as Serena Williams, Jordan Chiles, and K-pop superstar LISA. It was a flop, not many people bought it, because it was promoted by a cheap woman and not a professional atlethe. a miss for Nike!
However, this is what about fashion, it does not only run with figures. It runs on energy. And the aura surrounding Kim Kardashian herself has changed to the point that even the biggest SKIMS fan cannot help but notice it.
When the Covers Stopped Coming
Reportedly, as of early 2026, Kim has not been featured on the covers of any major magazine since 2024 – except Vogue France. That is in contrast to 2022 when she was featuring in 6 magazines, was the face of Dolce & Gabbana, Balenciaga and Stuart Weitzman campaigns in the same year. That is not a small change. That is the industry slowly passing by.
Mark Borkowski, an expert in PR, was clear about it: the energy was not in the Kardashians anymore. And when a PR professional that has been watching the rise and fall of celebrity brands over decades is saying so – you take note.
The Controversy Pile-Up That Nobody Asked For
Here is where things get genuinely messy. 2025 was a year where SKIMS and Kim Kardashian kept making headlines for all the wrong reasons, and the controversies were not small ones you could scroll past.
The Tesla Cybertruck Post
At the beginning of 2025, Kim shared a picture of herself in a Tesla Cybertruck on Instagram. This could have passed as a celebrity schick bit except the timing this was posted days after Elon Musk gave Trump the kind of Nazi salute that many viewers referred to and the fact that it began to gutted the US federal workforce with DOGE. The counterlash was rapid and stupendous. People were not only annoyed but they were really angry.
The Israel Expansion That Sparked Boycotts
In 2025, SKIMS said it was to open fifteen stores in Israel in a partnership with Irani Corp – another transaction which crumbled at the time the world was still glued to the current crisis in Gaza. As a brand whose concept is founded on concepts of inclusivity and the ability to represent all bodies, the optics were catastrophic.
This was aggravated by Kim and his history on the Israel-Palestine issue. In 2023 she had made a post in support of Israel, which she deleted, and made a confusing apology. By 2025, she has remained silent on the matter altogether, which as a woman who has more than 355 million Instagram followers does not pass as a sign of neutrality but rather a strategic move. The word boycott is one that fans who had been with her over the years began to take seriously.
The Products That Made People Go “…Why?”
Then there were the products. In 2025, SKIMS introduced a thong with fake pubic hair attached to it – there are twelve color options, the entire set. This was followed by the Ultimate Pierced Nipple Push-Up Bra which was reintroduced in May 2025 with a removable faux nipple piercing. And in February, the Ultimate Butt line with an inbuilt pad that would add two inches of volume.
Now look — some of this worked. When the first drop of the nipple bra occurred, it had a waitlist of 250,000 people. Products sold out. The shock-value approach does in fact create sales. However, there is a distinction between provocative and cool and provocative and pushing it too far, and in 2025 the atmosphere changed to pushing too far in the eyes of many people.
The Oversaturation Problem Is Real
This is the conversation that people keep dancing around but nobody wants to say directly: after nearly two decades, people have reached a saturation point with Kim Kardashian.
Consider it on a global basis. In its inception, Keeping Up With the Kardashians was a messy, uninhibited, and actually addictive reality show. The current Hulu show? It is refined by all accounts, edited and has lost the true unexpecteds. Ratings have been declining. Reportedly, there are talks of Kim quitting the show altogether in favor of SKIMS and becoming a full-time enterprise, which is, in fact, maybe the single best business decision she could make.
A Tale of Two Eras
The cultural moment in 2012 was Kim Kardashian. That Paper Magazine cover shattered the internet by her. She was omnipresent, as though electric and impossible. In 2026, Kim Kardashian has been everywhere and it is different. It is more of a compulsion than a thrill. And the cohort that is currently driving fashion culture, the Gen Z generation who are purchasing SKIMS, but are also purchasing new brand Syrn by Sydney Sweeney, did not grow up idolising Kim the same that millennials did. To them she is a heritage brand, and not a culture hero.
The New Competition Is Coming for the Crown
Speaking of Sydney Sweeney — let us talk about what happened in January 2026, because it is directly relevant to the future of SKIMS and Kim Kardashian’s hold on the shapewear and intimates market.
Sweeney originally established her lingerie brand Syrn by literally swinging bras off of the Hollywood Sign. The internet lost its mind. The initial anthology was sold out in a few days. Initial sales projections are in the range of £816 million First year sales – a pittance compared to SKIMS, but Syrn is six weeks old. SKIMS had a period of five years to reach the present size.
It was announced in the sources that Kim is paining conscious of the fact that Sweeney has moved to lingerie. Soon after the launch of the Syrn, SKIMS uploaded new lace campaign images – this is entirely coincidental, but being fans they saw them and they discussed them. The comment boxes were enjoying themselves.
The Challenger Energy Is Different
What Syrn lacks that SKIMS is currently battling to produce is an authentic excitement. The brand has spontaneity and freshness that SKIMS, with six years and billions of valuation, cannot go away on. That does not imply that Sweeney will overthrown the empire. The financial analogy is nearly comic at this point in time. And yet it implies that SKIMS will not be able to work in the automatic mode anymore and believe that the throne is undisputed.
So Is Kim Killing It or Fading Out? (The Honest Answer)
It is this, then, which causes this question to be so interesting to sit with; that things are true simultaneously, and that it is not contradictory. It is simply the fact of the existence of a mega-brand in 2026.
SKIMS the business is performing well indeed. The NikeSKIMS collection. The next SKIMS Beauty that will be launched in 2026 after acquiring the shuttered SKKN by Kim. A $5 billion valuation. Global retail expansion. Camps by celebrities like Sabrina Carpenter to Rosé to Charli XCX. The company will not disappear.
Kim Kardashian the cultural figure is in a different chapter. The magazine covers dried up. The fashion campaigns which are not directly related to her own brands are gone. The scandals have accumulated to shake more than in the past years. The new generation of the consumer is being raised with new icons, new aesthetics, and a new relationship with the type of aspirational fantasy SKIMS was founded on.
In 2026, she was named by CNBC a 2026 Changemaker due to her headship of SKIMS to a valuation of $5 billion and her six-year legal apprenticeship. The entrepreneur is emerging victorious. The celebrity is going through a more complex situation.
What Happens Next
The intelligent money is that SKIMS continues to expand no matter how Kim loses her own cultural relevance. Brands have a way of surviving longer than the celebrity appeal, which propelled them into existence – consider how much people purchase the brands of founders who they were unable to identify or whom they lost interest in. The question is, can SKIMS improve at a rate that can enable them to be able to capture the next generation using their own terms and not just riding the coattails of the past decade.
A big test is the Beauty line that will be introduced in 2026. Entering cosmetics places SKIMS in direct competition with a highly crowded marketplace and unlike the shapewear market, SKIMS did not have a true first-mover advantage since the beauty industry is a war of well-financed, culturally relevant competitors. Fenty. Rhode. Charlotte Tilbury. And should Syrn actually be making the jump to cosmetics as stated, Sydney Sweeney will be there as well.
Are people done with SKIMS and Kim Kardashian? Not done, no. However, the association is different. The ride-or-die era is finally at an end. The brand continues to attract attention, continue to sell product and occupy an enormous market share. But it must now labor at it like it had five years ago. And frankly, that could be just the pressure that it requires to balance out.
Fashion never stands still. Whether you are spearheading what is called that movement or are the pursuer is the question.
Written by itismandystyle — your go-to for fashion that actually makes you think.
Also check out the Dutch work of Mandy Buddenberg: mandyb.nl. This talented founder is actually Dutch;)
Mandy is a Dutch digital dash(aka nerd) running many platforms, including this one. She is a Dutch entrepreneur and writer but is also active in English. Branding and creating is what she does best. Next to that she works parttime as a social health worker/health care worker, guiding people to live their fullest and helping people with their problems. The combination is good for her and gives her the feeling she is giving back to society. After having a rough start back in 2015 she is back here again and want to travel more and meet need people (soulmates). She likes working and being busy is a blessing. Next to that she is spiritual and believes in karma. .