Skims has promoted Tracy Nguyen to Chief Communications Officer, moving one of the most visible communications operators in the celebrity-commerce space into the top comms seat at the Kardashian-founded brand.

WWD first reported the appointment. The elevation puts Nguyen — who has led Skims' communications function through a period of aggressive brand expansion — in charge of the full communications apparatus at a company that has made earned media and celebrity proximity its core marketing engine since Kim Kardashian co-founded it in 2019.

Why does this promotion matter to practitioners?

Skims does not behave like a typical apparel marketer. The brand built a multi-billion-dollar valuation — investors valued it at roughly $4 billion in its 2023 funding round — with a comms strategy that leans on drops, celebrity casting announcements and culture-moment placements rather than traditional ad spend. Communications, in other words, is not a support function there. It is the growth function.

A CCO title at a company like that carries real operational weight. Whoever holds it controls the narrative cadence of a brand that lives and dies by press cycles, from product launches to casting news to the founder's own media orbit.

The internal promotion itself is the signal. Brands that elevate a comms lead to the C-suite are, at minimum, saying the function has earned a seat at the strategy table rather than reporting through marketing. For agency people pitching Skims, and for in-house teams benchmarking their own reporting lines, that structural detail is the one worth noting.

What do we actually know?

The confirmed facts are lean. Nguyen now holds the Chief Communications Officer title at Skims. She steps up from her prior role leading communications at the company, a post she has held while the brand scaled from shapewear into menswear, swimwear and partnerships including the Team USA Olympic kit deal.

What the WWD report does not spell out — and what Skims has not yet detailed publicly — includes:

• Her full remit and direct reports in the new structure
• Who she reports to day-to-day
• Whether the promotion comes with an expanded scope beyond communications, such as brand or public affairs
• Any leadership changes beneath her triggered by the move

Expect a formal announcement or profile treatment to fill in those gaps. Trade press will likely press for the org-chart detail first.

Who is Tracy Nguyen?

Nguyen has been the communications face of one of the most press-covered consumer brands of the past five years. At Skims she has run a function that handles a relentless volume of launches, celebrity announcements and founder-driven news moments — the kind of always-on newsroom load that most apparel comms teams would find punishing.

The promotion to CCO formalizes what practitioners in the space already suspected: communications at Skims has been a board-level-adjacent function in practice for some time. Now it has the title to match.

What does this say about the comms market?

Internal promotions to CCO remain the preferred route for consumer brands with strong existing comms muscle. Hiring a CCO from outside is expensive, slow and risky in a founder-led culture; elevating the person who already manages the founder relationship and the press cadence is the low-friction move.

For comms professionals watching the market, the takeaway is straightforward. The CCO title is still attainable at high-growth consumer brands, but the path runs through brands where earned media is demonstrably the growth engine — not through companies where comms sits downstream of paid media.

Nguyen's elevation is also a data point for the ongoing debate about where communications sits organizationally. At Skims, the answer is now unambiguous: at the top table, with the chief in the title.

What happens next?

Watch for the shape of Nguyen's first moves as CCO. New chiefs typically use the first quarter to restructure, consolidate agency rosters or formalize the comms function's role in launches. At a brand with Skims' news velocity, any shift in how announcements flow — centralization, faster turnaround, different agency mix — will be visible quickly in the trade press.

Comms Memo will update this story as Skims discloses further details on the appointment.