SKIMS: The New Shape of Bridal Wear
By: Pravanya Pathak & Brooke Williams
The Ivey Business Review is a student publication conceived, designed and managed by Honors Business Administration students at the Ivey Business School.
A bride spends months perfecting her wedding gown. She visits the salon countless times where dresses are clipped, pinned, steamed, and re-pinned. Seams are measured down to the millimeter. A hem is dropped an eighth of an inch. On a wedding day, the perfection of every stitch is essential.
Then, she goes home, opens a drawer, and pulls out a pair of shapewear.
The underlayer responsible for how the dress looks, how it moves when she walks, how it photographs when she turns, and how it feels eight hours in, was purchased separately and engineered with no knowledge of the dress it would live beneath. The result is predictable: a visible band cutting across her shoulder, a compression line through the hip, and shorts peeking beneath the skirt when she sits down for dinner.
Bridal wear is a $63.4 billion industry built on the promise of perfection. The underlayer that determines whether that promise holds has been an afterthought for decades. Bridal dress manufacturers often use a one-size-fits all mindset when designing the underlayer, using standard measurements that do not suit the individual bride. SKIMS, the brand that turned shapewear from a functional corrective into a cultural product, has the opportunity to turn the industry's biggest oversight into its next defining moment.
A Shift in Shape: Rewriting the Rules of Shapewear
Traditionally, shapewear has played a role as a form-fitting undergarment designed to shape, smooth, and support the body underneath clothing. It was historically marketed as a corrective garment used to compress the body under formal attire and carried the quiet stigma of concealment. However, in 2019, Kim Kardashian – a globally recognized businesswoman, reality star, and media figure – reframed the role of shapewear by launching SKIMS. She leveraged her reputation for knowing how to "make herself look perfect", lending the brand immediate authority. SKIMS made shapewear something women actually wanted to wear since it differentiated itself by highlighting inclusive sizing, advanced fabric engineering, and the kind of cultural attention that’s difficult for legacy brand to manufacture . From its buttery-soft Fits Everybody knits to its smooth, seamless compressive fabrics, every product was designed with stretch, softness, and breathability in mind in order to move with the body rather than restrain it.
Six years later, SKIMS established themselves as a credible market leader in shapewear, becoming valued at USD $5 billion.
A Tight Fit: SKIMS’ Race Against Intense Competition in a Growing Market
After six years, SKIMS is no longer just a shapewear brand. They have expanded into several apparel categories such as underwear, loungewear, sleepwear, and others. The company also demonstrated continued financial success, closing a USD $225 million financing round in November 2025.
But as SKIMS increases in scale, so do other competitors. The global shapewear market is projected to grow from USD $2.73 billion to USD $4.32 billion from 2024 to 2030 and that growth is attracting new entrants. Competitors are flooding the market with the same value proposition: smooth, seamless, and comfortable shapewear. Fabrics can be reverse-engineered, aesthetics can be copied, and price points can be undercut. Even in the bridal industry, both SKIMS and Spanx, a key competitor, already offer dedicated bridal shapewear lines. This industry has been getting recognition for its growth and potential, but nobody has made shapewear part of the wedding dress yet. Bridal shapewear still faces integration issues with wedding dresses and brides often realize that their shapewear is not suited to the fit and cut of their chosen dresses.
That is where B2B partnerships can fit in. A partnership embedded into a retailer's alterations process cannot be replicated with a product launch. A competitor can flood the market with shapewear, but they cannot copy a partnership nor the trust built inside a bridal salon with the stylists. For a brand like SKIMS, who is rumoured to be planning an initial public offering (IPO), that defensibility matters due to the high competition that SKIMs currently faces. Rapid innovation in comfortable, breathable fabrics and shifts towards body image consciousness have driven rapid competition in the industry. Market leaders, like SKIMS, have faced pressure from new entrants who focus on lower pricing and social media marketing.
NikeSKIMS case study: Where Strength Meets Shape
SKIMS has already proven it knows how to enter a space through partnership. When NikeSKIMS launched in 2025, it was the first time that Nike, the strongest global apparel brand, had ever partnered with an outside company to create an entirely new brand. Nike did not need SKIMS to make activewear and SKIMS did not need Nike to sell bodysuits. But together, they found something consumers didn't know they were missing and the market reflected that. Fashionable apparel for high intensity sports was often overlooked by brands, but had been garnering more attention on social media. In December of 2024, SKIMS launched a skiwear collaboration with North Face, generating $5.4 million in media impact value (MIV) in the first twenty-four hours. SKIMS had been looking into becoming a serious player in sportswear and Nike was looking to become a name brand in women’s athletics. Nike's stock rose nearly 3% on the announcement alone, first week sales hit $47 million, exceeding projections by 23%, and 42% of buyers were new to SKIMS entirely.
This collaboration worked because SKIMS brought cultural relevance, increased audience reach, and blended technical function with real-world wearability. Kim Kardashian's campaign posts generated engagement rates of 8.2%, well above industry benchmarks. SKIMS did not just sell products, it brought a new consumer group to Nike.
The same logic applies to bridalwear. Bridal houses do not need SKIMS to sell wedding dresses and SKIMS doesn't need bridal houses to sell shapewear., but that is exactly the point. The most valuable partnerships are not born out of necessity, but out of a shared opportunity to provide new value to consumers. NikeSKIMS gave female athletes a new way to think about performance and style. A SKIMS and bridalwear partnership gives brides a new way to think about fit and comfort.
About the Bridalwear Industry: The Price of a Perfect Fit
While NikeSKIMS reshaped how consumers approach activewear, similar opportunities exist in categories where consumer expectations are high but innovation has lagged. One compelling opportunity lies in bridal wear. Unlike everyday apparel purchases often driven by trends or impulse, a wedding is regarded as one of the most emotional and meaningful moments of a person’s life. Since the nineteenth century, wedding dresses have served as more than just a garment, acting as an expression of individual style and a reflection of new beginnings, making the bridal wear market highly emotionally and culturally driven.
Buying a wedding dress results in a highly involved purchasing process. Brides often try on four to seven dresses across multiple appointments while navigating the pressure of planning the perfect wedding, with over 89% of brides reporting stress leading up to and during their weddings. After layering in the expectation to look “perfect” or feel like the “best version” of themselves on the big day, the stakes only rise. The combination of stress with the once-in-a-lifetime nature of the purchase drastically increases willingness to pay. Brides are willing to spend 532.42% more on their wedding dress than a formal dress for an event other than a wedding.
The global bridal wear market is valued at USD $63.4 billion with a forecasted CAGR of 4.6% between 2024 and 2029. A key factor driving this growth is an increase in product premiumization and customization. As disposable income rises, consumers are increasingly willing to invest in high-quality, luxury bridal wear, prioritizing fabrics of superior quality, intricate designs, and bespoke craftsmanship. Roughly 40% of bridal boutiques now report increased demand for customizable options, a trend aligned with the consumer side, with 68% of luxury brides willing to invest in custom-made gowns.
Moving into the Bridal Industry: Tailored Beneath The Surface
SKIMS’ next move should be to partner with established bridal retailers to offer SKIMS shapewear as an integrated part of the alterations process instead of relying on their bridal shapewear line sold separately. The shapewear will be directly into the dress so it can be customized to each bride’s body and look invisible beneath the dress. This will capitalize on higher consumer willingness-to-pay for customization. In this model, SKIMS would sell their specialized shapewear fabrics in panels to bridal retailers that would sew the material directly into wedding dresses as part of the alterations and fitting process. Bridal retailers would offer this as a charged, optional add-on service during fittings, and seamstresses would embed the shapewear into the construction of the wedding dress itself so that support and shaping are fully integrated, seamless, and invisible.
A Seamless Bridal Experience
What would SKIMS’ partnerships with bridal retailers look like for the bride? The process begins with selecting a dress. Then, as the bride stands before the mirror at her first fitting appointment, stylists and seamstresses will observe how the dress sits and moves with her body. Together, they will identify areas where the dress could feel more secure, defined, or shaped. For example, a flowy A-line might need light compression through the waist and a strapless ballgown might need structured support built into the bodice. SKIMS shapewear panels are selected for that specific dress on that body. Once the ideal shape is identified, rather than selecting a single, off-the-rack shapewear garment, the alterations team will sew smaller SKIMS shapewear panels directly into the dress. With SKIMS’ diverse range of fabrics, compression levels, and shades, the ending result is a truly custom fit. Across dress silhouettes, this integration allows shapewear to seamlessly exist where the dress needs it and nowhere else, preventing unnecessary clunky material. The result is shapewear that was made for the dress, not found for it.
SKIMS Integration: The Value of What You Don’t See
For the bride, SKIMS integration solves a problem that no amount of dress fittings currently can and aligns with the brand’s current values. As Kim Kardashian put it, the goal of SKIMS has always been simple: make women feel confident and comfortable. There is no higher-stakes day for apparel to deliver on confidence and beauty than a wedding day. Therefore, a wedding dress is one of the few purchases in a woman’s life where precision is non-negotiable.
For SKIMS, the value is structural. Embedding shapewear into the alterations process transforms SKIMS from a product a bride might buy into a part of the wedding experience itself. This creates a fundamentally different commercial relationship, one that generates revenue per dress, fitting, and retailer rather than relying on seasonal trend cycles. It is also one that competitors cannot easily replicate. Competitors can launch a bridal line, but it becomes difficult to replicate a partnership sewn into the dress itself.
Together, the proposition benefits both parties. A bride gets the most personalized and comfortable fit on her most important day, and SKIMS gets a defensible, recurring presence in one of the most emotionally significant retail moments
Kleinfeld Bridal: Saying Yes to More Than the Dress
As one of the most recognized names in the global bridal industry, Kleinfeld Bridal is uniquely positioned to redefine the bridal fitting experience through partnering with SKIMS. The New-York based bridal boutique has a wide selection of dresses and over 19,000 shoppers visiting the store each year. As the host of TLC’s hit show “Say Yes to the Dress” and with over 1.5 million followers on Instagram, Kleinfeld is a highly influential platform in the bridal wear market.
Kleinfeld’s positioning strengthens the case for a partnership. The brand’s website highlights a commitment to partnering with “designers who are pushing boundaries and creating innovative designs that celebrate diversity, inclusivity, and individuality”, aligning closely with SKIMS’ emphasis on product innovation, size inclusivity, and shade range. From an operational lens, integrating shapewear into the tailoring process builds on their existing capabilities while further enhancing the level of customization available for brides. The brand has a robust in-house alterations department of over 100 experts dedicated to providing a personal experience and offering Signature, VIP, and Express alterations. Features currently offered include adding straps, shortening a train, and lining a bodice.
Beyond the fact that Kleinfeld boasts the largest wedding dress collection in the world, “Say Yes to the Dress” has allowed the store to build a reputation of offering the premium bridal experience. The magic doesn’t stop once you say yes to the dress, it continues during the in-depth alterations process. However, while Kleinfeld's website suggests bringing off-the-rack shapewear to fitting appointments, it doesn’t currently sell any product. Partnering with SKIMS would further Kleinfeld’s commitment to customization, taking shapewear from an optional add-on to a part of the process.
From a brand perspective, a partnership with SKIMS would enhance Kleinfeld’s visibility through access to a highly engaged digital audience. With over 7 million Instagram followers, SKIMS offers significant reach at a time when brides increasingly rely on social media for inspiration and decision-making. Kleinfeld currently holds partnerships with bridal designer Pnina Tornai, and recently with Generation Tux as an entrance into the menswear space., Integrating SKIMS into the bridal fitting process would build on this strategy by extending partnerships beyond product offerings into service innovation, reinforcing Kleinfeld’s relevance and reputation for personalized bridal wear.
The Next Layer of Growth for SKIMS
SKIMS built a five billion dollar company by showing women what they needed and delivering it before anyone else did. The bridal market is the next version of that same instinct; a high-stakes, emotional moment where everything is built around precision and where the right product, integrated the right way, can make brides feel confident in their dress.
But bridal can be just the beginning.
A bride walking down the aisle in a gown with SKIMS sewn into it is also a woman who can become a long-term consumer of formalwear across future occasions. The same integration that works beneath a wedding gown can work beneath a red carpet dress, a bridesmaid gown, and a formal evening silhouette. Once SKIMS establishes itself as an essential layer in the bridal alterations process, the blueprint for entering any high-stakes, high-spend dressing moment becomes replicable at couture houses, formalwear retailers, and luxury department stores worldwide.
SKIMS has already redefined the shapewear industry; now, it has the opportunity to redefine how formalwear is built, starting with one that matters the most. The future of bridalwear isn’t simply defined by add ons, it’s built in.
Editor(s): Asima Hudani
Researcher(s): Michael Au
