By David Wolfenden, managing director at Ripple
For brands that have built their identity and customer base predominantly online, opening a flagship store presents an unusual design challenge. The physical space needs to feel instantly recognisable to existing customers while offering something that can’t be replicated through a screen.SKIMS’ first standalone UK store on Regent Street is an impressive example of what happens when a digital brand takes that challenge seriously.
The 12,000 sq. ft. flagship occupies the former Ted Baker site at 245-247 Regent Street and represents the fullest physical expression of SKIMS in the UK to date. Before the opening, British customers had predominantly encountered the brand online or through wholesale partners including Selfridges, Harrods and END.
The move from website to flagship store is significant. Rather than simply transferring its products onto rails and shelves, SKIMS has effectively turned its brand identity into architecture. The result is something approaching a brand temple.
Building the brand in three dimensions
Designed by architect Rafael de Cárdenas, the store takes the visual codes already associated with SKIMS and applies them to almost every element of the environment.
Its familiar palette of skin tones and neutrals dominates. Prominent curved forms and tactile surfaces give the space an almost sculpted quality, echoing the softness of the brand’s products and visual identity. Cárdenas has explained that the softened forms are intended to echo the human body.
The centrepiece is a huge sculpture by artist Vanessa Beecroft. It gives the store something closer to the atmosphere of a contemporary gallery than a conventional underwear shop, while making the body itself central to the architecture. This is an extension of the visual identity that SKIMS customers already know.
Even before opening, the store’s hoardings were moulded and curved to resemble the smooth finish associated with the brand’s shapewear. The building itself was being used to communicate SKIMS before customers had stepped through the door.
For retailers making the transition from digital to physical, there is a lesson here. A flagship store gives customers the opportunity to step inside the brand and live it.
The return of the flagship
That investment in physical experience might seem counterintuitive for businesses that have demonstrated they can acquire customers and sell successfully online. However, consumer behaviour suggests otherwise. CBRE’s 2026 Retail Generational Survey of 2,002 UK consumers found that all of the younger generations surveyed preferred shopping in store. For clothing and footwear specifically, 63% of Gen Alpha and 54% of younger Gen Z consumers who expressed a preference chose physical stores.
The research also found that 34% care about store aesthetics, 29% value in-store events and 14% want opportunities to create content while visiting stores. This research highlights why a brands’ online look needs to translate into a physical feel.
For a digitally native business, physical retail doesn’t necessarily need to replace ecommerce. It can do the things ecommerce struggles to achieve, such as allowing customers to touch products, understand fit, and experience the brand as an environment.
When the store becomes marketing
There is another reason for investing so heavily in the physical environment. A distinctive flagship no longer communicates only with the people who walk through its doors. Stores are photographed, filmed, shared and discussed online. For social-first brands in particular, physical and digital retail can feed one another.
CBRE found TikTok was the leading social platform for brand discovery across the younger generations it surveyed, while 65% of Gen Z respondents said they had bought products following an influencer recommendation. That makes the economics of flagship design more interesting.
A sculpture, staircase or fitting room is still part of the customer experience, but it can also become content. The physical store provides the backdrop for material that subsequently reaches consumers who may never visit Regent Street. In that sense, SKIMS has created both a shop and a three-dimensional marketing asset.
The minimal look can still make an impact
Perhaps the strongest aspect of the Regent Street store is that its restraint doesn’t come at the expense of identity. Minimal retail interiors can easily become interchangeable, with little to distinguish one brand from another. SKIMS manages to make its store recognisably its own.
The strongest flagship stores manage to deliver theatre without allowing it to overwhelm the transaction. The commercial test is whether that environment helps customers find the right product, feel confident about fit and complete a purchase. As digitally native businesses mature, physical stores can give them something ecommerce cannot. A website can establish enormous reach, but a flagship on one of the world’s best-known shopping streets establishes a true presence.
The Design Matters scorecard
First impression: 5/5
SKIMS manages to make its UK flagship command attention despite its muted colour palette. Its sculptural architecture and statue creates impact through scale and restraint. It feels recognisable as SKIMS without relying heavily on logos.
Navigation: 4/5
The interconnected, open-plan spaces create a sense of flow, while different categories have room to establish their own presence. The scale and sparseness help avoid visual clutter, although the challenge for any gallery-like environment is ensuring aesthetics never take priority over quickly finding a specific product.
Product presentation: 4/5
This is where the architecture earns its keep. Relatively simple garments are given space and significance, while the restrained surroundings allow differences in shape, texture and tone to become much more noticeable.
Technology: 3.5/5
Interestingly, technology isn’t the headline here. Unlike retail concepts that put screens, apps or automated services front and centre, SKIMS lets the physical environment do much of the work. For an online-first brand, that restraint is arguably refreshing, although there is scope for the relationship between its digital and physical customer journeys to become even more visible.
Customer experience: 4/5
Two banks of fitting rooms are particularly important for a brand built around fit, comfort and the body. The softness of the architecture also feels appropriate for products that can make the fitting-room experience particularly personal.
Value perception: 4.5/5
The store succeeds in elevating relatively everyday product categories through architecture, materials, space and art. It makes underwear and loungewear feel high-end without losing the visual simplicity central to the brand.
Overall: 4/5
SKIMS Regent Street demonstrates what a flagship can achieve for a brand that has already built a substantial business online. The real value is in making something previously experienced largely through photographs, videos and ecommerce tangible.
Every curve, surface and display has been designed to feel like an extension of SKIMS rather than a generic premium retail template. The result is a store that functions as a showroom, sales environment and brand statement simultaneously.
For online-first retailers considering physical expansion, that’s the most interesting lesson. The objective shouldn’t be to recreate the website in bricks and mortar. Physical retail should offer the customer something the website fundamentally cannot.
SKIMS has given its online identity walls, floors and a front door, and created a convincing argument for the flagship as a modern-day brand temple.
