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It’s not my grandmother’s underwear. Or maybe that’s true.
Skims, the Shapewear brand of Kim Kardashian, has launched a retro collection that can be picked straight from store racks of the 1950s. Or behind mom’s mom’s closet. The brand’s “vintage-inspired” bra (sold for $60) and shapewear ($118) debuted on July 2nd, bringing its old-fashioned silhouette in 2025.
While you can enjoy new items in colours, fits and styles, it’s worth exploring why Skims, a brand known for its futuristic design, thinks vintage.
“We’re looking forward to seeing you in the future,” said Lorynn Divita, an associate professor of apparel design and merchandising at Baylor University. These designs reverse course following the prevalence of bralettes that welcomed “underbooves” without shapes that have surpassed much of the 2010s, she said. But Skims trades structured shapes and their rulebooks with more fabrics.
Skim declined to request comment from USA.
Do you look backwards or meet at that moment?
Skim refers to the past, but it is possible that it has a modern cues with its retro movements. The collection is in discourse that sets the tone of humility in a female way. Cocket Milkmaid dresses are all rage, just like more covered options for workouts this summer. Fashion Upper Echelon is divided into a push of humility, from repulsion against nude at the Met Gala to a total ban on revealing outfits at Cannes. More recently, Lauren Sanchez Bezos has dumped her “sexy” outfit for her neck-height, long-sleeved Sofia Lauren-inspired 1950s wedding dress.
Skims’ retro collection evokes the beauty standards that defined sexiness in mid-20th century America, with large amounts of lips lined up with lip lines. The brand debuted its retro designs in an Instagram post featuring women in playful vignettes. They pos for vintage cameras and tweet old landline codes. Skim’s post can be speculated as a reference to the “pinup girls,” a female icon in mass-produced images that was sold as wall decorations in the mid-20th century. However, this time Skim becomes the person who dresses her.
“This is lingerie for people who don’t have to sit at their desks for eight hours,” Divita said. “This is lingerie for people who don’t have to work in the service industry, and this is not lingerie for people who have to do anything other than lounge and look pretty.
“It definitely feels like a comment about trade culture,” says Lauren Downing Peters, an associate professor of fashion studies at Columbia College Chicago, referring to women who promote traditional femininity and domestic lifestyles.
Women who embody the role of gender in the 1950s may be happy to see this collection come out, she said, as most major brands serve different consumers. These retro clothes leave sex “just under the surface” without displaying the skin. “It reflects the tension between exaggeration and containment,” she said.
For this reason, Skim places retro lines “for girls” rather than men’s gazes, Peters said.
Some of these trends can be attributed to nostalgia for easier and easier times. But the simple outfits and social media that make the past so appealing and appealing lack the context of what America really looked like over 80 years ago, Divita said.
“They forget that the women didn’t have credit cards, they couldn’t get a divorce,” she said. “Their social status wasn’t what they are now. They look back at this fascinating lingerie, which makes people think about all the good things that are relevant at the time.”
More reserved clothing could follow this underwear shift, she added. She said tight tees and athlete crop tops don’t like pointy “bullet bras.” Heavy structured lingerie is once again very popular, and the brand is likely to start selling blouse-style tops and longer hemlines, which explain the more layers below it, Divita noted.
Conversely, some influencers wear skim retro girdles as their only outfit, covering 1950s clothing to make them look only visible to their husbands, says Einavrabinovic Fox, a gender professor at Case Western Reserve University. And the lightweight, breathable fabric that Skim uses in 2025 allows the body to feel more aggressive and flexible with these types of clothing than in the past.
“My question is, how many customers of Skim actually accept it as underwear?” she spoke about today’s era where lingerie as daywear is typical.
And while the pointy bras were not a symbol of the 50s, Skims Marketing highlighted the connection. Think about the look of Madonna’s iconic Jean Paul Gaultier Corn Bra. This popularized the form as a bold statement of women’s power, Rabinovic Fox said.
“A pointy bra doesn’t have to admire anything else,” she said. “It could also be a statement of rebellion.”
