The branding of the W.N.B.A. as the hottest league in any game continues apace, as does the growing convergence of fashion and sports.
The latest step in the relationship: a Skims ad campaign released just ahead of the start of the women’s basketball season and featuring the rookie Cameron Brink, the newly retired three-time W.N.B.A. champion-turned-president of Adidas basketball Candace Parker and the All-Stars and Olympians Kelsey Plum of the Las Vegas Aces and Skylar Diggins-Smith of the Seattle Storm and DiJonai Carrington of the Connecticut Sun.
The campaign depicts the players in various skin-tone undies — bikini and high-waist briefs, boy shorts, bandeaus and T-shirts — accessorized with basketballs, high-heel pumps and elaborate rhinestone jewelry. It both toys with old pinup tropes and subverts them — the women look less come hither than don’t mess with me. It also frames Skims, which was founded by Kim Kardashian and Jens Grede in 2018 and valued at $4 billion last July, less as shapewear than haute sportswear.
It is the first Skims campaign to celebrate women players, following the brand’s last two big basketball moves: a similar shoot that introduced the Skims men’s line and featured Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder, among other athletes, and a campaign just in time for March Madness featuring male all-star college basketball players. (They were mostly in terry loungewear, not underwear.)
At the time, given the record-setting popularity of the women’s N.C.A.A. tournament, some fans criticized Skims for focusing on male athletes rather than women. This is the answer.
It is a reflection of the growing power of the women’s game and the star appeal that has been brought to the game by the new class of draft picks, who are more aware than ever of the leverage that comes from personal branding — and associated relationships with the fashion world.
Ms. Brink, for example, the second draft pick, who is playing for the Los Angeles Sparks, wore Balmain on the W.N.B.A. orange carpet, has close to 790,000 Instagram followers and has been working with the stylist Mary Gonsalves Kinney for the last two years.
Her fellow draftee Angel Reese, who was chosen seventh by the Chicago Sky, attended the Met Gala last week in a feathered chiffon gown custom-made by 16Arlington and recently unveiled her own Good American jeans campaign. (Good American was founded by Ms. Kardashian’s sister Khloé Kardashian and Emma Grede, Mr. Grede’s wife.)
And Caitlin Clark, the No. 1 draft pick, chosen by the Indiana Fever, arrived for her first news conference after the W.N.B.A. draft in Indianapolis in a Louis Vuitton dress and jacket after donning an all-Prada look for the draft.
In turn, Skims, which ranked 13th in the Lyst Index of most searched fashion brands in the first quarter of 2024, has moved aggressively into sports. In October, it became the first official underwear partner of the N.B.A., W.N.B.A. and USA Basketball.
At the time, Ms. Kardashian described the partnership as “a reflection of Skims’ growing influence on culture” and said the relationship would show up in “unexpected ways.” Presumably, the ad campaign is one of those. In an email, Ms. Kardashian said she had been planning the W.N.B.A. campaign since the deal was signed.
The basketball partnership followed the brand’s signing on as the official underwear partner of Team USA for the Tokyo Olympics. Not long after the W.N.B.A. deal was announced, Skims unveiled a holiday campaign starring Patrick Mahomes, the quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs, and his family, all lounging around in plaid PJs.
Skims is not the only fashion (or fashion-adjacent) company to collaborate with athletes as part of a strategic play. This summer, the Paris Olympics is being sponsored in part by LVMH, the French luxury group, which has been signing up Olympians as brand ambassadors for fashion houses like Dior and Vuitton. Competition, after all, doesn’t just happen on the court.
Vanessa Friedman
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