Fashion mogul Emma Grede built retail behemoth Skims with Kim Kardashian, but refuses to see herself as a role model despite her extraordinary wealth.
Few views are more typically Los Angeles than the Hollywood sign, the hills, the circular Capitol Records building and a towering Skims billboard.
It’s a scene that Emma Grede, the London-born fashion mogul who is Skims’ co-founder and chief product officer, sees from her desk.
“I have the most Hollywood view you could imagine,” she tells Stellar of the Californian landmarks and pride-of-place ad for Skims, the multibillion-dollar brand she launched with Kim Kardashian in 2019.
The shapewear and clothing line is at the centre of Grede’s sprawling business portfolio, with fashion brand Good American, co-founded with Khloé Kardashian in 2016, and Frame, the denim brand run by her husband Jens, based out of another Beverly Hills building.
(The Skims empire also includes NikeSKIMS, the athleisure offshoot which recently launched in Australia.)
“I split my time,” she explains. “I spend probably four days a week in the Skims office. That’s where my studio is for Aspire, my podcast.
“And then I go down to the Beverly Hills office, which is on my way home.”
Like Skims, the aesthetic of Grede’s workspaces is clean and minimal “because naturally, when you have an apparel-based business, it’s messy. It’s full of fabric, full of samples, we do everything in-house”.
“So we have technicians and pattern cutters – there’s a lot happening. We also have our own atelier at Good American; we’re making things in the office.”
With an estimated net worth of US $400 million, the 43-year-old is a powerhouse of fashion. She and Jens – a co-founder and chief executive of Skims – relocated to California in 2017, and the couple and their four children split their time between their homes in Bel-Air and Malibu.
“LA is one of those places that you do miss … but equally you have to get out of LA,” she says of the family’s coastal home in California’s Santa Monica region.
“I spend a lot of the time on the beach in Malibu. As an English girl, it’s a dream.”
In between building her fashion empire, Grede has written her debut book, Start With Yourself: A New Vision For Work & Life.
It’s part memoir, part how-to guide for women in business, yet despite its subject matter, she insists she doesn’t think of herself as a role model. “Never, ever,” she adds.
“The truth of it is, I do what pleases me. You can’t be a people pleaser and a leader. I never think it’s my business to try to conform to something to make people think well of me.
“I’m very aware that … specifically for young women, they might find what I do aspirational and helpful for themselves.
“But I’m very much [thinking]: what is going to work for me?
“I never want to dispel myths about ease or conformity – or [imply] this stuff just magically happens because I manifested it.
“None of that’s true for me. I’ve had a job since I was 12. An exceptional life comes with an exceptional amount of trade-offs.”
It’s a work ethic shared by Grede’s most famous business partner. In a previous interview with Stellar, Kim Kardashian spoke about how she’d “learnt a lot on the way from mistakes that have been made”.
“You have to be willing to be OK with making mistakes, you have to learn things on your own, no matter what people tell you. Nothing is going to be perfect,” Kardashian told this writer.
While the public might expect a reality-show style dynamic, the working relationship between the business partners is more traditional.
“I’m the chief product officer, so my job is working across design, merch and planning,” Grede says.
“Kim is the creative director. My job is to take whatever it is that she can imagine – and make it a reality.
“So you can imagine that’s a very kind of intense and direct working relationship as it is with any two executives in the company,” Grede adds. “I think that people imagine that it works kind of differently. And the reality is, it doesn’t.”
Ultimately, the brand’s success comes down to execution. “[Kim] has a very, very strong sense of what she wants for her business and I make sure that happens,” Grede says. Yet she also acknowledges that even the sharpest corporate strategy requires timing and cultural resonance to scale to a fashion behemoth such as Skims or Good American.
“Good American was really successful because it was this turning point around what body positivity actually meant,” she tells Stellar of its launch almost a decade ago.
“All of the best plans in business need some other magic in the culture to attach to them, so that they can blow up.
“You can’t plan those types of things; otherwise, there would be many, many more Skims.”
Perhaps the most poignant lesson in Grede’s debut book is when she writes, “I refuse to be afraid of anyone.”
When Stellar asks how she handles fear, she explains: “Ambition actually requires discomfort. And if you want to make a lot of money and you want to be paid what you deserve, that’s going to require some audacity.
“Audacity is self-advocating, knowing your worth, and going after it without being ashamed,” she continues.
“Women have been socially conditioned to avoid the exact behaviours that lead to wealth and opportunities and leadership and visibility. I want to make sure that the lies that we’ve been sold about these things are taken away.”
Start With Yourself: A New Vision For Work & Life by Emma Grede ($34.99, Simon & Schuster) is out now.
This article originally appeared in Stellar. For more, click here.
