Jens Grede is the Swedish entrepreneur and CEO whose name appears on the founding documents of some of contemporary fashion’s most commercially significant brands. Best known today as the chief executive of SKIMS — the shapewear and apparel company he co-founded in 2019 with Kim Kardashian — Grede has spent over two decades building a career at the intersection of brand strategy, creative direction, and consumer culture.

He is also co-founder and chairman of FRAME, the premium denim label that established his presence in the consumer fashion market, and a founding partner in Good American and Safely alongside his wife, entrepreneur Emma Grede. The holding company he operates through is called Popular Culture — a name that quietly signals how Grede thinks about what he builds.

In this biography, we trace the arc of his career from a Stockholm upbringing shaped by a filmmaker father, to the creative agency corridors of early 2000s London, and eventually to the executive offices of a $5 billion brand in Los Angeles.

Early Life & Background

Jens Grede was born in 1978 in Stockholm, Sweden, into a household where creativity was a professional concern rather than a weekend hobby. His father, Kjell Grede, was a respected Swedish film director whose 1982 film The Flight of the Eagle earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. His mother worked as an artist. Growing up in that environment — where visual storytelling and aesthetic judgment were part of everyday conversation — clearly left an imprint.

Details about Grede’s formal education remain limited in verified public records. According to the Business of Fashion, his early professional path led him to London’s Wallpaper* magazine, then one of the most influential publications at the intersection of design, architecture, and lifestyle. It was there that he first encountered Erik Torstensson — another young Swede who had been personally recruited to the magazine by its founder Tyler Brûlé. The two men would go on to become one of the more durable creative partnerships in fashion’s recent history.

Grede has three siblings: Jenny, Joel, and Klara Grede. Beyond those names, further details about his family of origin have not been publicly disclosed.

Career: From Saturday London to SKIMS

In 2003, Grede and Torstensson left the relative security of Wallpaper* to launch their own London-based creative agency, Saturday London, with backing from Mother Holdings. They were in their early twenties. The agency grew steadily, and by 2008 they had formalized their various investments and activities under a holding structure called Saturday Group.

Saturday Group’s client list became a who’s-who of global fashion: H&M, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Gucci Group, Richemont, and J.Crew were among the brands that worked with the agency. The firm’s influence extended to editorial: Grede and Torstensson served as editors-in-chief of Man About Town magazine and went on to co-found Industrie, a biannual publication that documented the fashion industry through long-form photography and interviews. In 2010, the pair collaborated with Net-A-Porter to help create Mr Porter, the menswear retail destination that would become one of luxury e-commerce’s landmark projects.

One of Saturday Group’s most cited achievements was orchestrating the Calvin Klein campaign that featured a then-unknown Justin Bieber — a collaboration that helped redefine how legacy fashion brands could engage with younger audiences through social media. The agency was eventually sold in parts to Omnicom and Interpublic Group between 2015 and 2018.

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“When I met Kim and she showed me what her early ideas around SKIMS were, I wasn’t looking for a project. I had no interest in starting another business, but when I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.”

— Jens Grede, as reported by The Robin Report, 2025

FRAME: Entering Consumer Fashion

In 2012, while still running their agency, Grede and Torstensson launched FRAME — a premium denim brand produced in and distributed out of Los Angeles. The brand positioned itself around a single, deceptively simple idea: the perfect pair of jeans. It quickly attracted stockists including Barneys, Selfridges, Net-A-Porter, and Nordstrom, and celebrity endorsements arrived without much effort. Model Karlie Kloss collaborated with FRAME in 2013 on a line tailored for taller women — an early gesture toward size-aware design that would become a recurring theme across Grede’s subsequent ventures.

FRAME remains active today, with Grede serving as chairman. The pandemic proved difficult for the brand — its wholesale-heavy distribution model meant a sharper revenue decline than direct-to-consumer businesses faced in 2020 — but it continued operating and has since stabilized.

Good American, SKIMS, and the Celebrity Brand Model

In 2016, Jens and Emma Grede co-founded Good American with Khloé Kardashian. The brand was among the earlier mainstream fashion labels to build inclusive sizing — from size 00 through 24 — directly into its founding premise rather than as an afterthought. Emma Grede serves as CEO; the launch was reported as one of the most successful first-day apparel launches on record at the time.

The more consequential project came in 2019. When Kim Kardashian brought her early concept for a shapewear brand to the Gredes, Jens was not immediately looking for a new venture. By his own account, once he saw the product concept, he could not set it aside. SKIMS launched in September 2019 as a size-inclusive shapewear brand — initially offering a range of nine shades to address the chronic underrepresentation of darker skin tones in the category. Consumer demand was immediate. The site crashed on launch day.

As CEO, Grede has led the company through four funding rounds. SKIMS reached a $3.2 billion valuation in early 2022, grew to $4 billion in July 2023 after raising $270 million in a Series C round led by Wellington Management, and most recently secured $225 million in November 2025 in a round led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives — bringing the valuation to $5 billion. The company reported approximately $750 million in revenue for 2023 and projected surpassing $1 billion in net sales for 2025. Grede announced an estimated net profit of $190 million for 2023, confirming the company had reached profitability. Since opening its first physical store in Washington D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood in June 2024, SKIMS has expanded to over 22 U.S. retail locations as well as stores in Mexico, with additional openings planned for the UAE and the UK.

Net Worth, Business Ventures & Financial Context

Jens Grede’s individual net worth has not been publicly confirmed by any verified source, and he has not appeared on any major wealth ranking lists under his own name. However, the publicly documented scale of his business interests provides meaningful financial context.

What is documented is that Saturday Group — his earlier marketing agency built with Torstensson — was sold in parts to two of the world’s largest advertising conglomerates, Omnicom and Interpublic Group, between 2015 and 2018. The financial terms of those transactions were not publicly disclosed.

Beyond SKIMS and FRAME, Grede has expanded his entrepreneurial footprint through several additional brand partnerships. He collaborated with NFL quarterback Tom Brady to launch BRADY, a performance sportswear label. He partnered with Kris Jenner on Safely, a natural home cleaning products brand. He has also worked on Khy, a fashion brand built around Kylie Jenner. These ventures are operated through Popular Culture, his Los Angeles-based holding company.

Grede is also a noted private investor. His investment portfolio, according to publicly available records, includes a stake in newsletter platform Substack and the creator monetization company Passes. He and business partner Oscar Engelbert reportedly purchased a landmark $61 million commercial building on North Maple Drive in Beverly Hills in October 2024, intended to serve as the headquarters for FRAME.

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Personal Life & Family

Jens Grede is married to Emma Grede (born Emma Findlay, September 23, 1982), a British entrepreneur who is the CEO and co-founder of Good American, a founding partner of SKIMS, and co-founder of Safely. The pair met through the fashion industry — the exact year is reported variously as 2006 or 2008 in different sources — and married around 2010 to 2012 (precise dates conflict across sources and have not been publicly confirmed). Together they have four children.

Emma Grede has a notably public profile of her own: she has been a recurring guest investor on Shark Tank and was a founding signatory of the Fifteen Percent Pledge, a commitment by retailers to allocate shelf space proportional to Black Americans’ share of the U.S. population. The couple relocated from London to Los Angeles in 2017. They live in the Bel Air neighborhood, where they purchased a $24 million estate that had previously been owned by fashion executive Serge Azria.

Both Gredes maintain a relatively low personal social media profile compared to the celebrity founders attached to their brands. Jens in particular has described himself in interviews as a “student of popular culture” — attentive to consumer trends and cultural shifts rather than pursuing his own public persona. His professional profile on the Business of Fashion describes him as a prolific investor in retail and media through Popular Culture, but detailed disclosures about those investments remain limited.

Grede has spoken at industry forums including Business of Fashion’s VOICES conference in 2024, where he appeared alongside On Running co-founder David Allemann to discuss building culture-shaping brands. His public commentary tends to focus on brand strategy, consumer trust, and the mechanics of launching with celebrity partners while ensuring the brand has an independent foundation — a challenge he has navigated across multiple ventures.