Kim Kardashian built a $5 billion brand on a simple promise: SKIMS makes you feel good, look good, and it is worth the money. Then she sold a $148 box of hair ties.
The SKIMS “Accessories Advent Calendar” was released in late October with the promise of “twelve days of fun surprises”. What customers actually received was a tartan teddy bear keychain, hair ties, SKIMS-branded bobby pins, a squishy ornament, beige elastic straps, a comb keychain, and a faux fur compact mirror keychain.
That is it. That is the $148.
One TikTok creator, Kayla Ryan, went viral after unboxing the calendar, her excitement visibly draining with each passing day. “I’m gonna lose my mind,” she said. “I’m about to get pissed off. I better start pulling better s**t because this was way too expensive.”
Her video has been viewed tens of millions of times. And the comments were brutal. “I wouldn’t pay $15 for that,” one person wrote. Another said it looked like “a bunch of stuff that Kim Kardashian was emptying out of her bedside table”. One user compared it to “things my cat collects from around my house”.
The Arrogance of the “Fine Print” Defense
Here is where the story gets interesting. SKIMS did list the contents of the calendar on its website. Technically, no one was lied to. The information was there.
But that defense misses the point entirely. When you are a brand that has built its reputation on quality and value, you do not get to hide behind a product description. You do not get to sell a $148 box of bobby pins and then point to the fine print when people are angry.
As one social media user quoted by the Daily Mail put it: “If the contents were disclosed, you ignored the description, spent $148, and then acted completely blindsided by what you received, some of that responsibility belongs to YOU”.
They are not wrong. But they are also missing the bigger picture. The reason people were blindsided is not that they did not read the description. It is because they trusted the SKIMS name. They assumed that a brand with a $5 billion valuation would not sell them a box of junk.
The Refund Was Smart But the Launch Was Not
To SKIMS’ credit, the company responded quickly. Within days of the backlash, it issued a statement acknowledging that “for some, the calendar didn’t meet expectations” and offered every customer a full refund or store credit.
A crisis communications analysis by 5W PR called it a “masterclass” in damage control. The response was accountable (“We fell short this time”), it ignored the fine print, it removed friction by waiving return shipping, and it put customers first by contacting them directly before issuing a public statement.
That is all true. The response was good but the response should never have been necessary.
The real failure happened long before the first TikTok went viral. It happened in the product development meeting where someone decided that a $148 price tag was justified by a keychain with the SKIMS logo on it. It happened in the marketing meeting where someone assumed that the brand’s halo effect would be enough to carry a product that had no real value.
And it happened because SKIMS forgot a fundamental rule of celebrity branding: your name can open doors, but it cannot make people happy about being ripped off.
The Chanel Precedent Nobody Learned From
This is not the first time a luxury brand has tried to sell an advent calendar full of cheap trinkets at an astronomical price.
In 2021, Chanel faced similar backlash over an $825 advent calendar that contained stickers, a keychain, and samples. The contents were estimated to be worth around $300. Dior faced criticism for a $3,500 calendar that was mostly sample-sized products.
The pattern is clear. Luxury brands see advent calendars as a way to capitalize on the unboxing trend, sell low-cost items at a premium, and call it “exclusivity.” And every time, consumers eventually catch on.
The difference with SKIMS is that the brand is not Chanel. It is not Dior. It built its empire on the promise of accessible luxury—the idea that you could get high-quality basics without the designer markup. A $148 box of hair ties is just expensive.
The Lesson for Every Brand
The SKIMS advent calendar saga offers three lessons for any brand considering a similar move.
First: Your logo is not a product. A bobby pin with “SKIMS” on it is still a bobby pin. A keychain with a brand name is still a keychain. The value of your brand can elevate a product, but it cannot replace the product itself. Consumers are smarter than the halo effect suggests.
Second: The unboxing trend is a double-edged sword. Social media has made advent calendars more visible than ever. But it has also made failures more visible. As retail expert Trae Bodge told CBS News: “With social media being such a big factor with gift-giving, you’ve got to kind of think that through as a brand, you know, ‘am I creating something that’s gonna hold up well on a TikTok?'”.
Third: The refund is not the fix. SKIMS did the right thing by offering refunds. But a refund does not restore trust. It does not undo the viral videos of customers laughing at your product. It does not change the fact that for 48 hours, your brand was the punchline of the internet.
The only real fix is to make a product that is worth the price. And that starts with respecting your customers enough to give them something real.
