Keeping Up with India’s SKIMS Habit: Can Reliance Make Premium Shapewear a Daily Purchase?

When Reliance Brands announced its partnership with SKIMS last week, the obvious takeaway was that Kim Kardashian's billion-dollar shapewear label was finally entering India.

But for many Indian consumers, SKIMS has been here for years.

Not through flagship stores or official retail channels, but in suitcases arriving from New York, London and Dubai, through personal shoppers, cross-border e-commerce platforms and friends returning from overseas holidays. On Instagram and TikTok, every new SKIMS drop has travelled faster than its products. By the time Reliance opens the brand's first stores in Delhi and Mumbai, much of its target audience will already know what it sells, how it fits and, in many cases, what it costs.

That makes this launch different from most international fashion debuts.

Reliance is not introducing SKIMS to India. It is legitimising a demand that has quietly existed for years.

"The urban premium consumer is already aware of SKIMS. Many have purchased it abroad or through friends and family travelling overseas," says brand experts. "The official launch removes that barrier. It gives consumers access to the original product through organised retail, while giving the brand an opportunity to build a long-term business instead of relying on informal demand."

That distinction matters because India's premium fashion market has changed.

A decade ago, international brands often entered the country before consumers knew them. Today, the sequence has reversed. Social media, global creators and international travel have compressed the discovery cycle. By the time brands arrive, consumers have often spent years following them online.

SKIMS is perhaps one of the clearest examples of that phenomenon.

When the company launched in 2019, it helped reshape shapewear from a functional undergarment into an aspirational lifestyle category. Comfort replaced compression as the dominant narrative. Inclusive sizing, neutral colour palettes and technical fabrics turned products once hidden beneath clothing into a fashion conversation of their own. The brand has since expanded into underwear, loungewear, menswear and performance wear, becoming one of fashion's fastest-growing businesses.

Its influence reached India long before its retail network did.

Local startups such as Krvvy and Underneat emerged in a market where consumers had already been exposed to the global shapewear conversation. Rather than creating demand from scratch, these companies adapted it to Indian realities—offering products designed for local body types, climates, wardrobes and price points.

That means SKIMS is not entering an empty category.

It is entering one where consumer awareness is already high, but where access to the category leader has remained limited.

For Reliance Brands, that creates an opportunity.

Unlike many international labels that require years of investment to build awareness, SKIMS arrives with an existing audience. The retailer's job is less about convincing consumers to try shapewear and more about converting aspiration into regular consumption.

"Shapewear is a differentiated space, and that's where SKIMS has a reliable partner in Reliance Brands," says Harish Bijoor, business and brand strategy specialist. "The key for SKIMS will be to focus on functional, premium shapewear and loungewear, categories that remain relatively underdeveloped in India. Kim Kardashian has already made SKIMS a global success, and Reliance is the right partner to build that business locally."

The bigger opportunity, therefore, is not simply selling shapewear.

It is giving India's growing base of premium consumers official access to a brand they have spent years discovering through the digital world.