Kim Kardashian Turned Ubiquity Into $4 Billion
Kardashian was everywhere in 2023 — for a reason.
When was the last time Kim Kardashian held a grocery bag?
In late 2017, she told Ellen Degeneres she wanted her family to rent her a Ralphs grocery store for one hour so that she could go shopping because she had, for years, been too famous to do so. Over the weekend, she got to hold her own grocery bag again, as part of a stunt for Balenciaga’s pre-fall 2024 show in Los Angeles, featuring a collaboration with luxury grocery chain Erewhon. She was wearing lace shoes-tights and a plain black Balenciaga hoodie, and told the press that the bag is what designer Demna wanted her to carry.
Though social media commenters still slam Kardashian for associating with Balenciaga in the wake of its late 2022 ad campaign scandals (she had said at the time that she was “reevaluating” her relationship to the brand), the affiliation still sends a valuable message: that Kardashian is a part of the fashion world. This fashion halo hovers over everything in Kardashian’s orbit, notably her clothing brand Skims, which is valued at $4 billion and was recently reported to be considering a 2024 IPO.
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Kardashian has been attending Balenciaga fashion shows since the mid-2010s, and served as a face of the brand beginning in early 2022. By the time her first Balenciaga campaign broke that February, she had been wearing the brand exclusively in public for seven months. The ads marked the beginning of a fashion-exposure onslaught for Kardashian, who by then had existed in the media as a more generalized onslaught for more than a decade. In 2022 alone, she clocked a total of seventeen major fashion campaigns and magazine covers. These included:
Five campaigns or look books featuring her for her own brands, SKKN and Skims. (Note that these brands released other marketing material not featuring Kardashian).
Seven magazine cover stories. These included Variety’s infamous “get your fucking ass up and work” story, which isn’t technically a fashion thing but resulted in enormous (and I believe, ultimately helpful) media exposure for Kardashian.
Four major fashion brand campaigns, including Balenciaga, Stuart Weitzman, and Dolce & Gabbana.
One Balenciaga couture show.
I took a look back at Kardashian’s 2023 to see if she had slowed down at all. And… she hasn’t. This year, she had sixteen major campaign and magazine cover moments, including:
Seven campaigns or major marketing moments featuring her for Skims or SKKN. (Again, not all campaigns featured her.)
Five magazine cover stories. Two — Time and Forture — were not fashion magazines, but featured her because of her success with her fashion brand.
Two major fashion brand campaigns, for Marc Jacobs and Dolce & Gabbana.
One Balenciaga ready-to-wear show.
One Skims x NBA partnership announcement, resulting in a flurry of press around photos of Kardashian holding basketballs.
Looking back at preceding years, Kardashian had many fewer capital “F” Fashion cover and campaign moments. I clocked eight for 2021 and three for 2020. Perhaps the pandemic slowed things down, but still, she had just eight in 2019. Sixteen or seventeen covers and campaigns isn’t just a lot for her — it’s a lot for any celebrity. Think of another star who felt regularly around in 2023. Say, Anne Hathaway. She had six campaign and magazine cover moments in 2023. Barbie star Margot Robbie had seven.
If you’re tired of Kardashian, sure, you can blame the media and fashion brands for giving her so much exposure two years running. Not included in my lists is every single other thing Kardashian posted or did or wore on a red carpet that led to thousands of headlines over the past two years. But — and I don’t know if Kardashian strategized with this in mind or not — you could also look at it as her cleverly exploiting a relatively new dynamic in the glossy magazine-celebrity industrial complex, beautifully summed up by writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner in a recent New York Times Magazine feature on how Taylor Swift’s Eras tour came to dominate summer:
I’ve watched in recent years as our biggest stars have forgone sitting for interviews in favor of Q. and A.s with an equally famous friend, with an agreed-upon set of softball questions, or, worse, an Instagram post.
Celebrities have been avoiding profiles as magazines have been on a slow and steady decline in the wake of the 2008 recession because they can control their own publicity through social media, which gives them an upper hand with magazine cover story negotiations (hence we get Beyoncé on the cover of Vogue in 2015 without her sitting for an interview).
Kardashian seems to be doing the opposite by leaning into talking. In 2019, with the launch of her shapewear line months off, she appeared on the cover of Vogue by herself for the first time (she had previously made her cover debut in the arms of her ex Kanye West in 2014). In the accompanying profile, writer Jonathan Van Meter expresses surprise that “I had been told by Kim’s publicist that Kim was willing—eager, in fact—to address Kanye’s mental-health issues.”
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Around the time this story came out, Kardashian was pushing her KKW makeup line and the shapewear launch was still months off. That brand was being called Kimono, which ultimately resulted in fierce social media backlash and a letter from the Mayor of Kyoto urging Kardashian to change the name. In her WSJ. digital cover story that summer, Kardashian talked openly about the controversy, expressed contrition, and got a splashy headline about her “Billion-Dollar Shapewear Bet.” In late August, she announced the brand name was changed to Skims, resulting in another round of press. The line launched on September 10. Fewer than two years in, the brand was valued at $1.6 billion. Now, it’s valued at $4 billion. In July, CEO Jens Grede told the New York Times the company is profitable, did $500 million in sales in 2022, and was on track to do $750 million in sales this year.
To attribute the success of Skims solely to a media strategy wouldn’t be entirely fair. Kardashian and her business partners were onto something when they launched the line in 2019. Victoria’s Secret was fading. Plus, Spanx was in stasis, more apparel line than fashion brand with a limited range of products. Skims was able to offer an array of shades, sizes, and styles (like one-legged shapewear to accommodate a high-slit skirt) that served a much larger customer base. It has branched out to loungewear, pajamas, swimwear, nipple bras, and much more, with seasonal and special collections that create both media moments and urgency in the minds of consumers.
Yet, Kardashian’s media strategy has helped in a number of ways. Appearing on various editions of Vogue and GQ and the like or fronting high-fashion campaigns like Marc Jacobs solidifies her as a fashion personality, enmeshing her in the close-knit, fickle industry. By doing Vogue and CR Fashion Book photo shoots she’s meeting photographers, stylists, etc. whom she can hire to work on her brand. Also, fashion people like working with their kind. Can you imagine Kate Moss appearing in a Spanx ad? Or the former Victoria’s Secret Angels?
Perhaps more important than the ads featuring Kardashian are the campaigns and marketing materials that don’t feature her, like the Skims Olympics collection look book featuring snowboarder Chloe Kim, or the recent campaign featuring Ice Spice and Pink Pantheress. The brand is fashionable and zeitgeist-y enough that the ads have become media moments of their own, which will encourage celebrities to continue doing them. But they also suggest that the brand is becoming something bigger than Kardashian herself. This is crucial, because Skims will not last if Kardashian has to personally push every single product. If the brand’s success depends entirely on her image, the second she decides or is forced to pull back, Skims becomes a much less attractive proposition for investors.
This year, the big launch from Kar-Jenner was Kylie Jenner’s Khy clothing line. She employed a similar strategy to Kardashian, filling her year with fashion campaigns (Dolce & Gabbana eyewear, Coperni, Acne, and more) and magazine covers (Homme Girls, WSJ., Interview). Yet in 2022, the main fashion thing she did was a cover story (just the one!) for CR Fashion Book.
Last year around this time, I wondered if the Kardashians had finally peaked and would start to fade. The laws of celebrity physics mandate that that has to happen at some point. But in the near term, Skims has physical stores to open and Khy has sweatsuits to sell, so I’d predict we’ll see a 2024 with both of them delivering a similar volume of covers and ad campaigns. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Kardashian becomes the official campaign face of the Balenciaga x Erewhon collection* next year. Unless she’s holding out for Demna to collab with Ralphs.
*You can already shop this; $550 apron, anyone?
Earlier in Back Row:
She is interesting to look at, and her team seems to have their pulse on new and emerging trends. She looks good in print, never saw the sex tape, but when she opens her mouth I hit mute. She talks in a baby talk that I find unbearable. There is A.LOT. Of work to maintain a certain facade she has. I admit not being plugged into current celebrity cults, she works it well. But looking at others; Paris Hilton immediately comes to mind how long is she going to last? In fact how long will any of this last?
The world is in a very strange place right now. We are on the edge of a knife, economically, politically, emotionally and our health is not good. If we as a society really breakdown, will anyone watch these people? Will they care? Will it be something that people will want to try and emulate? What happens if the grid goes down and they don’t have an audience, and what will happen to their fashion, photos, etc when everyday is a struggle to just survive. I think the next year is going to be VERY interesting and not in a good way.(more like, didn’t see that coming) it is going to get very interesting.
I have to say the K cult has interesting tinges of multiple bargains with the Devil. I'm just waiting for the exclusive tie-in with Skims and Khaite, (pace Khaite, she's the only designer I can think of who starts with that initial) and the subsequent implosion.