ENTERTAINMENT
For a brand built on the promise of seamless, second-skin basics, SKIMS just made an entrance that was anything but understated. The Kim Kardashian-founded shapewear-and-loungewear label opened its first standalone United Kingdom flagship on July 23, taking over 12,000 square feet at 245-247 Regent Street — the former home of Ted Baker — in what the company is calling the largest SKIMS retail location anywhere in Europe. A week and a half later, the store is still generating the kind of foot traffic and social media chatter that most retailers spend entire marketing budgets chasing.
The location itself is a statement. Regent Street is one of London’s most storied and heavily trafficked shopping corridors, a sweeping Regency-era curve lined with global flagships, and SKIMS’ arrival there — on a ten-year lease with the Crown Estate, the street’s longtime landlord — signals a brand no longer content to be a hugely successful direct-to-consumer name but one actively competing for permanent real estate alongside the world’s oldest luxury and fashion houses.
From Shapewear Startup to Streetscape Landmark
SKIMS launched in 2019 with a relatively narrow proposition: solve the shapewear category with better fabric technology and size-inclusive marketing, largely online. Six years later, the brand has expanded into underwear, loungewear, menswear, swim, and a widely covered collaboration line with Nike, while building out a physical retail footprint that increasingly resembles that of a heritage fashion house rather than a startup. The Regent Street flagship is being described internally as a “significant milestone” rather than simply another store opening — language that reflects how central physical retail has become to the brand’s next growth phase, even as it retains its DTC roots.
Kardashian, SKIMS’ co-founder and chief creative officer, framed the choice of location in personal terms. “London has always been one of the most inspiring fashion cities in the world to me, so opening our first UK flagship on Regent Street feels especially exciting,” she said around the opening. In a separate conversation with Vogue, she was more specific about the physical experience of the space itself, praising its layout: “It has my favourite flow.”
Inside the Space
The store’s design was handled by Rafael de Cárdenas’ New York-based studio, Architecture at Large, known for high-concept retail environments that blur the line between shopping and installation art. At the center of the Regent Street flagship sits a sculptural work by Vanessa Beecroft, the Italian conceptual artist whose collaborations with fashion brands over the past two decades have often explored the body, performance, and display — a fitting anchor piece for a brand whose entire identity is built around body-conscious design.
From that central installation, the store opens into a series of interconnected, open-plan shopping areas, described by trade press as featuring “refined architectural details, tactile materials and immersive product displays.” Rather than the clinical, minimalist aesthetic that has dominated much of shapewear and intimates retail for the past decade, the Regent Street space leans into texture and sculptural presence — an approach that mirrors the brand’s broader pivot from purely functional basics toward something closer to lifestyle and aspiration.
The full SKIMS assortment is available on-site, including shapewear, underwear, loungewear, the menswear line, seasonal collection pieces, and product from the closely watched NikeSKIMS collaboration — giving UK shoppers hands-on access to a range that, until now, was largely mediated through the brand’s website and a small number of pop-up activations.
Why Regent Street, Why Now
The timing is notable. SKIMS’ UK flagship arrives amid a broader wave of investment on Britain’s high streets this summer, even as retailers grapple with inflationary pressure and a summer of record UK temperatures that has, according to industry trackers, pushed more shopping activity online and reduced physical store visits in aggregate. Against that backdrop, brands opening major flagships are making a specific bet: that experiential, design-forward retail can pull shoppers back into physical spaces in a way that a standard storefront cannot.
SKIMS isn’t alone in that bet this month. The former Ted Baker unit’s transformation sits alongside other high-profile Regent Street-adjacent moves, including Marks & Spencer’s overhaul of its Oxford Street Pantheon location and Frasers Group’s combined Sports Direct and Everlast Gyms concept — part of a broader pattern of legacy and challenger brands alike investing heavily in flagship-scale physical retail even as pure online demand grows.
What This Means for Shoppers
For UK-based SKIMS customers, the flagship means an end to relying solely on international shipping and limited pop-up windows — full-range fitting, in-person sizing consultations, and access to region-specific product drops are now available on home turf. For London shoppers more broadly, the opening adds another marquee name to a Regent Street retail mix that has been actively reshuffling in the post-pandemic years, with legacy names like Ted Baker giving way to global direct-to-consumer brands making their first serious plays for permanent flagship space.
The Bigger Picture
The SKIMS Regent Street opening is also a useful marker of where the broader shapewear and intimates category has traveled over the past six years — from a niche innovation pitch about better fabric to a full lifestyle category commanding some of the most expensive retail real estate in the world. Whether the 12,000-square-foot bet pays off in sustained foot traffic, rather than opening-week novelty, will be one of the more closely watched retail stories in London for the rest of the year. For now, the queues outside the old Ted Baker storefront suggest Kardashian’s instinct about the location was, at minimum, correctly timed.
Looking Ahead
SKIMS has not confirmed additional European flagship locations beyond Regent Street, but the scale of the London investment — and the company’s broader trajectory from online-only startup to physical retail power player — suggests this won’t be the brand’s last major real estate announcement. For a company that built its name promising to smooth things over, SKIMS’ next chapter is proving to be anything but low-key.
