Kim Kardashian West launched the SKIMS shapewear brand in Los Angeles in September 2019, positioning it as an inclusive, body-positive line of compression garments available in a wide range of skin tones. SKIMS achieved a valuation of $3.2 billion by 2022 and became one of the most culturally influential clothing brands of the early twenty-first century. Critics observed that SKIMS represented the full cycle of the corset's history: a return to body compression now sold through the language of empowerment, diversity, and self-expression.

SKIMS attracted feminist literary commentary across blogs, essays, and poetry that interrogated the paradox of compression garments marketed as liberation. The brand's influence on body image among young women became a subject of contemporary feminist poetry and spoken-word performance, particularly in the tradition of Instagram and slam poetry. The SKIMS phenomenon demonstrated that the cultural logic of the corset — the body requiring reshaping — remained potent even as its vocabulary was transformed.