Rafael de Cárdenas decided to become an architect after reading about a building described as “the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.” Fitting, then, that Kimberly Noel Kardashian, notoriously eager for the same comparison, tapped him to design Skims’s New York flagship, which opened in December. (You’ve seen the pics: Kim riding that mobility scooter.) It was critic Herbert Muschamp, writing in 1999, who drew the Marilyn parallel to the Guggenheim Bilbao, finding both actress and building intuitive and exhibitionist. The interior of the 647 Fifth Avenue revamp by de Cárdenas, however, evokes the uptown Guggenheim more than Bilbao thanks to its plaster-finished spiral staircase—a defining presence, second only to Vanessa Beecroft’s fifteen-foot-tall female nude statue, which grabs shoppers’ attention as they enter. Beecroft’s performances, including the career-defining Show (1998), which assembled bikini-clad models at the base of the Guggenheim’s rotunda, are embedded in the DNA of a retail store striving to resemble a high temple of art. While that museum’s trademark “white” is actually a light gray, the finish of the Skims store is the color of masking tape. The monochrome walls, floors, and fixtures, with their voluptuous curves and reliefs, are more yellow in person than in photos, suffusing the interiors with a welcome warmth.
Ensconced in a French Renaissance Revival town house built for a Vanderbilt, and which most recently housed a longstanding Versace emporium (dating back to before Gianni’s murder), the Midtown East flagship marks Skims’s biggest play in brick-and-mortar since it began opening permanent locations last June. Those other stores were designed by Willo Perron, known for his zeitgeisty futurism—seen in projects like the Yeezy Studio (2018) in Calabasas, California, and Rihanna’s floating stage at the 2023 Super Bowl halftime show—whereas de Cárdenas’s supple minimalism signals an idea of luxury that fits right in on Fifth Avenue. Nowhere is this refinement more blatant than on the mezzanine floor, which intentionally forgoes product tables and racks, instead offering framed views of the sales floor below. Wasting space is a power move. Here, the interiors prioritize an atmospheric peekaboo that hints at the intimacy of the gaze, letting you look without giving yourself away. De Cárdenas negotiates Skims’s holy trinity—form (shapewear), comfort (loungewear), and the art of the tease (lingerie)—with calculated reticence but also an appropriate absence of pretension. This store is home to a bra with built-in nipples, after all.