
From holding-in leggings to push-up bras and hip hugging pants, I love the cocooning safety net that is shapewear. I also love Kim Kardashian, and have followed her every move since she burst onto our TV screens in 2007. So, you can imagine how happy I was when she launched SKIMS, her ‘solutionwear’ brand, back in 2019 - and how frenzied I was when it became available in the UK for the first time at Selfridges last month.
I set an alarm. I refreshed my screen relentlessly until the launch was live. I knew what I wanted, having studied the range extensively beforehand, and was a woman on a mission. I chose the Mid Thigh Sculpting Bodysuit for a full-body fix, and the Core Control Thong to smooth the silhouette of my hips and bum (this is my perceived problem area).
The most comfortable thongs of all time according to GLAMOUR editors (your granny pants could never compete)
Gallery17 PhotosThe signature SKIMS boxes arrived. I tore them open... and I burst out laughing. The bodysuit looked like it would barely fit on a teddy bear. I held it up against my shoulders and it fell to my navel. How was I supposed to get in it? The fabric felt so thick and stiff, would it really be able to stretch that much?
Sure enough, with a fair amount of wriggling, I made it in. And the results were as promised - a smooth, contoured, supported silhouette. The fabric is strong, so you can rely on it for ultimate compression, yet the seams didn’t dig in at all (a real bugbear of mine is when shapewear seams cut off circulation and leave the skin bulging out the sides).
My only complaint is that there’s no ‘pee-hole’. This is a feature Kim has added into her more recent designs, so sadly the Sculpting Bodysuit doesn’t feature it. It means that I would only wear the bodysuit for a very short time or a very special occasion, due to the simple inconvenience of having to squeeze in and out of it every time I needed a wee. If it had a pee hole, I expect I would never take it off.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qLjApqauqp2WtKLGyKecZ5ufY8Kse8aao6Wdoq58tLfIpqpmqpWrtqbD