WØRKS distils SKIMS store architecture in this tactile invitation design

When SKIMS opened its first flagship store on New York’s Fifth Avenue, the moment demanded an invitation that matched the gravity of the milestone. WØRKS, the New York-based creative studio, responded with a physical invitation that distils Rafael de Cárdenas’ store architecture into an intimate, hands-on experience. The invitation’s brilliance lies in its immediate conceptual clarity. “The concept we came up with almost immediately, after we saw the store renders,” explains Haris Fazlani, Creative Director. “The credit for this really goes to Rafael, his team and Vanessa Beecroft for creating such an emotive, direct and visceral environment,” adds Design Director Roy Cranston. “We sought only to distill the store experience into its simplest form, opting just to utilise the arch and the sculpture as the protagonists of the invite.” The design centres on the store’s signature arched windows, which WØRKS recognised as both architecturally specific to the SKIMS flagship and universally evocative of Fifth Avenue’s retail heritage. The outer envelope opens via a pull tab positioned strategically on the reverse to preserve the arch’s prominence on the front face. This reveals a die-cut window framing a sculptural blind emboss of the interior’s focal artwork – a gesture that bridges exterior facade and interior experience in a single moment.