It’s not your grandmother’s underwear. Or maybe it is.
SKIMS, Kim Kardashian‘s shapewear brand, just launched a retro collection that could be plucked right from a 1950s store rack. Or the back of your mom’s mom’s closet. The brand’s array of “vintage-inspired” bras (sold at $60) and shapewear (for $118) debuted July 2, bringing old-timey silhouettes to 2025. Think bras with pointed cups and bandeau slips that cover and flatten the belly.
While it’s OK that you may enjoy the new items for their color, fit or style, it’s worthwhile to explore why it matters that SKIMS, a brand known for its futuristic designs, is thinking vintage.
“The pendulum has swung back and we’re looking at boning, corsetry and compression,” said Lorynn Divita, associate professor of apparel design and merchandising at Baylor University. These designs reverse course following the prevalence of shapeless “underboob”-revealing bralettes that overtook much of the 2010s, she said. But SKIMS is trading that rule book for structured shapes with more fabric.
SKIMS declined USA TODAY’s request for comment.
Looking backwards or meeting the moment?
While SKIMS is referencing the past, it may also be taking contemporary cues in its retro move. The collection comes amid discourse setting a tone of modesty in women’s fashion: coquette milkmaid dresses are all the rage this summer, as are more covered-up options for working out. Fashion’s upper echelons have been divided over pushes for modesty, from backlash over nudity at the Met Gala to an all-out ban on revealing outfits at Cannes. Most recently, Lauren Sánchez Bezos ditched “sexy” garb for a neck-high, long-sleeve Sophia Loren-inspired 1950s wedding dress.
SKIMS’ retro collection evokes the buxom, lip-lined, big-curled beauty standard that defined sexy in mid-twentieth century America. The brand debuted its retro designs on their Instagram posts featuring women in playful vignettes – voluptuous motifs of bygone beauty in seductive positions. They pose with a vintage camera or twiddle the cord of an outdated landline phone. One could infer SKIMS’ posts are a reference to “pin-up girls,” the female icons of mass-produced images sold as wall decoration in the mid-20th century. But this time, SKIMS will be the one to dress her.
“This is lingerie for someone who doesn’t have to sit at a desk for eight hours,” Divita said. “This is lingerie for someone who does not have to work in the service industry. This is not lingerie for someone who has to do anything other than lounge about and look pretty. That is tapping into the current zeitgeist and some attitudes by some parts of society that women should be more feminine.”
“It definitely feels like a knowing commentary on trad-wife culture,” said Lauren Downing Peters, associate professor of fashion studies at Columbia College Chicago, referencing women who promote a lifestyle of traditional femininity and homemaking.
Women who embody 1950s gender roles might be happy to see this collection come out because most major brands have catered a different consumer, she said. These retro clothes leave sex “just beneath the surface” without putting skin on display: “It reflects that tension between exaggeration and containment,” she said.
For this reason, SKIMS is positioning the retro line “for the girls” rather than for the male gaze, Peters said.
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Some of these trends may be stemming from a nostalgia for an easier, simpler time. However, a simple outfit or social media post glamorizing the past lacks context regarding what America was really like for women over 80 years ago, said Divita.
“They forget women couldn’t have credit cards, they couldn’t get a divorce,” she said. “Their social position wasn’t what it is now. They look back at this attractive lingerie and it makes people think of all the good things associated with that time.”
More reserved clothes could follow this underwear shift, she added. Tight tees and athleisure crop tops don’t favor the pointy “bullet bra,” she said. If heavily-structured lingerie becomes exceedingly popular again, brands are likely to start selling blouse-style tops and longer hemlines that account more layers underneath, Divita noted.
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On the flip side, some influencers have posted wearing SKIMS’ retro girdle as a sole outfit, subverting the 1950s connotation of under garments as only visible to one’s husband, noted Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, professor of gender at Case Western Reserve University. And the light, breathable fabrics SKIMS uses in 2025 allow bodies to feel more active and flexible in these kinds of clothes than eras past.
“My question is how many SKIMS’ customers are actually embracing it as a underwear?” she said of today’s era wherein lingerie as daywear is typical.
And the pointy bra hasn’t just been a symbol of the ’50s, though the SKIMS marketing highlighted that connection. Think of Madonna’s iconic Jean Paul Gaultier cone bra look, which popularized the form as a bold statement of feminine power, Rabinovitch-Fox said.
“Pointed bra is not necessary a yearning to something else,” she said. “It can also be a statement of rebellion.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Skims is going ‘retro.’ Is Kim Kardashian onto something?
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