A Nonprofit Assessed Skims’ Corporate Accountability. It Didn’t Go Well.
As far as transparency and accountability are concerned, Skims is only skin deep.
That’s the conclusion of an upcoming report by Remake, which awarded the Kim Kardashian-founded shapewear unicorn, currently valued at some $4 billion, zero out of a possible 150 points for its lack of divulgence about anything—not wages nor materials nor commercial practices nor environmental justice nor traceability.
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This is the first time the fashion advocacy group scored Skims in its annual Fashion Accountability Report, poised for release Wednesday. The Fendi and Swarvoski collaborator joined 51 other top-earning brands and retailers—H&M Group, Nike and Zara owner Inditex, included—this year in facing scrutiny over what they’ve done to achieve their social and environmental goals, not just what they say they’ll do. So far, Skims is, as the kids say, giving us nothing.
“They don’t disclose anything,” said Alexa Roccanova, senior advocacy manager at Remake and a co-author of the report. “They have a few statements saying that they produce with suppliers that share their ethical commitments, that kind of thing, but nothing that they say is backed by data. Not to mention that everything they produce is heavily reliant on fossil-fuel-based materials.”
Launched in 2019 with Jens Grede—his wife, Emma, is co-founder and chief executive at Kardashian’s sister Khloé’s Good American label—Skims has become a bonafide “cultural and corporate phenomenon,” according to fashion search platform Lyst, which ranked the company 14th out of its 20 “hottest” brands of Q4 2023. It also makes “no attempt at transparency when it comes to its supply chain beyond a “vague commitment” to the “highest ethical standards and legal compliances,” Roccanova said.
“Saying something doesn’t make it true,” she said. “And because there’s a lack of regulation when it comes to disclosures right now, there’s nothing to let a customer or anyone reading their disclosures know that what they say is true or that they’re legally obligated to disclose that true information as it is right now.”
Take these “highest” ethical and legal standards. Without insight into what those standards are, what the audit process is like and if there is even a pathway for workers to to raise grievances, let alone what happens in terms of remediation when violations rear their heads, there’s little to substantiate the statements it provides as required by the 2010 California Transparency in Supply Chains Act and the 2015 United Kingdom Modern Slavery Act. On Skims’ website, a link to its social responsibility policy led to an error message that said “Resource expired.” Ditto with the Skims code of conduct.
The so-called “body positive” company has been named four times in the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre’s Myanmar garment worker allegations tracker. Bogart Lingerie (Yangon) Limited, a supplier it worked with in the coup-overtaken nation until at least April 2022 has been accused of inhumane work rates, wage theft and gender-based harassment and violence, though the manufacturer itself refutes the allegations. It’s unclear if Skims works with other factories in Myanmar because it doesn’t publish a rundown of its suppliers, which Roccanova called an “industry norm at this point.” (Import data links it to manufacturers in China and Turkey.)
“It’s like the main tool for accountability,” she said of the supplier list. “We can’t connect them back to individual factory allegations if we don’t know where they produce. But we see a lot of larger companies doing it. So that’s kind of the golden standard at this point. Or maybe not the golden standard, maybe more like the bare minimum.”
In 2022, Skims came under fire for greenwashing when the Changing Markets Foundation found that the “compostable” underwear packaging it emblazoned with “I am not plastic” came with small print stating that the material was plastic #4, or LDPE, after all.
“While this packaging might decompose in practice, as claimed, it is completely misleading to say that it is not plastic,” the corporate watchdog said.
Interestingly, Skims claims that it pays its workers fair wages, something that Roccanova said is an uncommon declaration from brands, particularly those with more robust social compliance programs, because they know that “it’s an overstate” that might be easily debunked by skeptical consumers or wary civil society groups.
A “moonshot goal,” she said, would be for brands and retailers to break down the data they likely already have to provide a country-by-country snapshot of working conditions at their Tier 1 suppliers, including “what are the average hours that workers are working? How much overtime are they working? The number of cases of gender-based violence and harassment discrimination?”
Far larger brands with more expansive international reaches have done this. “H&M is one of the few companies that has disclosed more robust country wage data, even if it is only for like a handful of countries like Bangladesh,” Roccanova said. “And they have a pretty good system for how they disclose that and make it digestible for the consumer.”
In December, Skims was approved for membership at the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a multi-stakeholder group that counts among its roster the likes of Adidas, Lululemon and Patagonia. It was formally onboarded last month. While the FLA doesn’t comment on specific brands, a spokesperson said that all members, “regardless of where they are on their journey,” are committed to “continuous improvement and implementation of FLA standards that are designed to ensure workers are treated fairly in their supply chain.”
The National Basketball Association’s official underwear partner chose not to engage with Remake on the exercise as roughly half of the assessed companies have done. It also did not respond to a request for comment. Other firms that scored zilch this year included Fashion Nova, which shed the 4 points it gleaned in 2022; Missguided, which lost 9 points; and Temu, another first-timer.
Roccanova said that there is a disconnect between Skims’ enthusiastic courting of a diverse customer base and the way it’s working with historically marginalized communities, including those largely consisting of the women who make their products.
“They don’t mention how their hiring practices take into account the local context where they operate,” she said. “There are no incentives that are shared for how company leadership is tied to making progress on goals related to human rights, environmental impacts, women’s empowerment—there’s just nothing there.”
And while the November campaign for its controversial built-in nipple bra, which promised that its wearer will “always look cold,” mentioned rising sea levels and shrinking ice sheets, riling up climate activists who saw it as undermining a genuine crisis, Skims has not supplied any information on emissions numbers or reduction targets. Instead, it’s donating 10 percent of the proceeds of the garment to 1% for the Planet, a nonprofit that fans out funds to “vetted environmental partners.”
“Given that they’ve made absolutely no mention of climate change on their website, the ad for the nipple bra comes off as mocking the climate crisis,” Roccanova said. “It’s also contradictory because it’s promoting new fossil-fuel-derived products.”
The maximalist private jet-setting lifestyles that the Kardashians adore don’t help, either. It was the same cognitive dissonance that generated widespread outrage after another member of the clan—Kourtney Kardashian Barker—was declared Boohoo’s ambassador, “with a focus on sustainability,” in 2022.
Her advice for Skims? “Disclosure, disclosure, disclosure.”
“Start with the basics,” Roccanova said. This means publishing a factory list, describing labor conditions, revealing what its commercial practices look like and providing emissions disclosures.
“And they just need a more robust system of communications with their customers,” she said. “I’m not convinced that the Skims customer cares about climate change, but other customers prospective customers do. So I think if they want to remain leaders in this space, they’re going to have to adapt in the way other large companies have if they want to stay relevant in a significant way.”
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