Kim Kardashian came across a beloved pair of lace-up pants by Roberto Cavalli on a recent closet deep-dive. The pants’ opulent prints were fresh in her mind as she began planning a new Skims swim collection. “I was looking back through old vacation pictures, and so many of the pieces I wore were Cavalli,” she remembers on a recent Friday morning, chatting from her home in Los Angeles. “Skims can be really simple; it’s all about the fits and the materials and the way they make you feel, but when you go on vacation sometimes you want something different. We were making our own prints and I was just thinking, ‘You know what? There has to be some way to do a Skims Cavalli collab…” And where there’s a will, there’s a way—or in this case, an Instagram DM. “I DM’d Fausto, ‘Hey what do you think of this idea?’”
“I was in heaven. Heaven!” answers Fausto Puglisi, Roberto Cavalli’s creative director, Zooming from a sunny corner of a Paris hotel. The pair immediately got to work. “It was just so organic, and so easy,” Kardashian adds. “I was a fan of Fausto when he had his own line, and I love what he’s been doing with Cavalli. We just get each other.”
The Roberto Cavalli and Skims Limited-Edition Swim collaboration launches on June 27, and features a wide-array of vacation-ready pieces, including swimsuits, cover-ups, and dresses for dinners out on the town, all in a selection of three classically Cavalli patterns: a zebra print, a vintage-inspired flora and fauna on a turquoise background, and a tiger print that’s a photorealistic motif of an actual big cat. The last came straight from Kardashian’s vacation memories. “It was a dress that I wore when I was in Mexico, and I just wanted it to be a part of the collection,” she recalls. “To see that one in a snatched one-piece bathing suit… I just love it.” There’s an overall sense of “going for it” to the collaboration—after all, neither Kardashian nor the Cavalli brand are known for blending into the background. “Fausto and his team presented a handful of prints—the floral print with the birds, [they showed it] in black or white or that turquoise color, and I said to the team, ‘we’re going for it!’ I love the turquoise.”
Although Skims is famous for its range of neutral shades—a way for every single person to be able to find a tone that suits their body—if you really think about it: Is an animal print not a neutral? “It’s true, it’s a neutral,” agrees Puglisi. But then again, he says, “the prints [Kim] chose are extremely Cavalli, so recognizable. There is this big, big connection between the heritage of Roberto Cavalli, Kim herself, and Skims because it’s about body consciousness, body positivity, freedom, sexiness, and Italian beauty.” And because you can’t look sexy if you don’t feel sexy, construction counts at both brands. “If I need a dress and I don’t have time to tailor it, I know I can always pick a Cavalli dress and it’ll fit me like a glove,” Kardashian mentions.
The campaign, shot in Los Angeles by Nadia Lee Cohen, stars Kardashian and—unexpectedly—her mother Kris Jenner. “She saw that I was looking at some of the samples as we were going through everything and she was like, ‘Oh my God, I want this and this,’” Kardashian recalls. “And I felt it was really a moment between me and her and we were like, ‘Wait, you have to be in the campaign,’ because Kris Jenner is the moment too.”
It’s a moment that synthesizes the appeal—and the success—of Skims, that there’s truly something that attracts almost everyone and, more importantly, that can fit nearly all of us. “I always [say] that you find the part that you feel the most confident in and figure out how to accentuate it, and cover what you’re not comfortable with,” Kardashian says. “When we do swim, I always make sure I have something to cover your arms, to cover your belly with a higher-waisted bottom.” The collection also includes swim capri pants, a bikini bottom with a built-in skirt, and a classic caftan—one of Puglisi’s favorites. “The bustier dress is also incredible, but I love all the pieces,” he says. Kardashian adds: “I think this collection in particular is going to reach a broader age range, and I think that’s super-important because there’s no one more fabulous than my mom. It made me feel so good that she felt so good.”
