FIT alumni designed curvaceous mannequins for Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand, Skims
By Raquel Laneri
In 2024, Skims, the shapewear brand started by Kim Kardashian, was preparing to open its first store, in Washington, D.C., and it needed mannequins. Special mannequins.
In came Glenn Sokoli, vice president of creative and marketing at Bernstein Display, which specializes in custom mannequins and fixtures for companies from Ralph Lauren to JC Penney, Carolina Herrera to Telfar. The Skims mannequins, however, presented a unique challenge.
“It was the most different mannequin I’ve ever worked on,” says Sokoli, Visual Presentation and Exhibition Design ’90 and assistant professor of Spatial Experience Design. He and Paulo Reis, Computer Animation and Interactive Media ’19, who sculpts all of Bernstein’s forms on his computer, toiled for a year to get the dramatic proportions and finish just right.
Mannequins are never one-size-fits-all. Each brand requests its own specific aesthetic, its own idea of the ideal body. JC Penney won’t go lower than a size 6, for example, while Carolina Herrera prefers its models super-tiny—“almost a double-zero,” Sokoli says. Levi’s sometimes uses gender-neutral mannequins for its baggy, layered looks, though the company has asked Sokoli for one with a more ample bottom to showcase the denim label’s latest figure-hugging style.
“Everything is customized,” Sokoli says. “We’re working on several projects now, and every one of the body types is different.”
Brands and retailers often ask for tweaks or adaptations to Bernstein’s existing lines. Currently, for example, many want mannequins that interact with the store’s architecture—some appear to be tumbling down alongside an escalator; others lean against a doorway. But they typically start with one of Bernstein’s collections as a jumping-off point.
Skims was different. Sokoli initially thought a recent Bernstein collection called Every Girl would work for the brand’s stretchy bras and figure-hugging briefs. Developed in 2019, at the height of the body-positivity movement, Every Girl had more real-world physiques: a smaller top and curvier bottom, or more natural breasts instead of artificially perky ones. (He says the pendulum began swinging the other way even before the popularity of GLP-1s and other weight-loss drugs, with retailers increasingly asking for smaller, more waifish looks.)
But when he put the Skims shapewear on the mannequins, the fabric bunched and pulled. For a mannequin displaying ready-to-wear, fit isn’t a huge issue: One can make adjustments. But for intimates, it is paramount. A natural breast forms to the bra, since it’s soft tissue, Sokoli explains. A mannequin’s breast, obviously, does not move, so its shape must fit perfectly into the bra cup. “It’s very technical.”
Sokoli and Reis, then, had to start from scratch. Every time they develop a new mannequin, they look through hundreds of photos and illustrations of the human body in various poses and with various physiques. “Even though the mannequin might be very abstract, we still need it to look somewhat realistic,” Reis says. “It needs some anatomical design underneath everything.”
They cobbled together a body—taking the thigh from one model, the stomach of another, with Reis sculpting it on the computer—but Skims still thought it wasn’t shapely enough and gave the duo a different set of measurements. “I went back to my program to start sculpting the mannequins based on those, and I was like, ‘Wow! This is wild!’” Reis recalls. The measurements the brand included for a size 6 had a double-D bust, a waist so small it could be a size 4, and very wide hips. The extreme hourglass shape reminded Reis of Kim Kardashian. “I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve got to switch my strategy here and start using the Kardashians as my reference,’” he says. “They loved it.”
“It’s not exactly based on Kim’s body, but it is the body type,” Sokoli clarifies. “It is a very small waist, but it’s really accentuating curves: the butt, thighs, hips, and the bust.”
None of the mannequins have heads, but all have a va-va-voom waist-to-hip ratio that evokes the company’s famous founder. Even the male mannequins don’t conform to the standard shape—a 30- or 32-inch waist; Skims’ swole versions have a 36, with finely articulated muscles.
Once Skims approved the new renderings, the mannequins were 3D printed and shipped. The team at Skims dressed each one to see how the clothes fit and responded with requests for modifications. Sokoli finalized the color palette (which needed to correspond with Skims’ neutral tones), oversaw paint finishes (Sokoli settled on a velvety gloss called “Floss”), and addressed any tricky technical issues, like how to mount a dozen busts to a wall in the store. “We basically do everything,” Sokoli says.
The process never stops. Bernstein also came up with a line of more muscular models for a collaboration with Nike, available at both Nike and Skims stores, featuring buff bodies jumping rope and doing calf stretches. He recently added a ballerina to the mix. Skims now has 22 stores, with plans to open at least 10 more in Israel alone in 2026, and more on the way.
“They’re so much fun to work with, because they’re constantly developing new things,” Sokoli says of Skims. Reis agrees. “It’s really been one of my favorite projects,” he says. “Usually brands have a strict guideline of what they want the mannequin to look like, and it just ends up blending in with the environment.” Skims—despite all the technical demands—challenged them to create something that stands out.
“I just love how cute our mannequins are,” Kim Kardashian recently said on Instagram. “I wanted our product to be seen on as many body types as possible.”
Hero photo by Rafael de Cárdenas.