Kimora Lee Simmons

Biography

Kimora Lee (née Perkins, formerly Simmons; born May 4, 1975) is an American fashion designer, television personality and former fashion model. Discovered as a teenager, she was signed to Chanel and went on to walk the runway for major fashion houses such as Fendi and Valentino and appeared on the covers of Vogue and Elle. She launched the global lifestyle brand Baby Phat in 1999. She ventured into reality television alongside her family, starring in the Style Network reality series Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane (2007–11), Kimora: House of Fab (2013), and currently in Kimora: Back in the Fab Lane (2025–present).

== Early life == Kimora Lee Perkins was born in St. Louis to an African-American father and a Japanese-Korean mother. Growing up in the northern St. Louis suburb of Florissant, Missouri, Simmons was a frequent target of bullying at school. Because of her height – 5'10" (177.8 cm) by age ten – and multiethnic background, Simmons struggled to find confidence and felt, in her own words, "different." In an effort to bolster Kimora's confidence, Kimora's mother enrolled her in modeling classes when she was eleven years old. Two years later, Simmons attended a model search event in Kansas City, where she was discovered by the event's organizer, Marie-Christine Kollock, an agent from the prominent Paris modeling agency, Glamour. Kollock then sent Simmons to Paris, where she would soon find favor with fashion industry leaders and begin her modeling career in earnest. Simmons is a graduate of Lutheran North High School in St. Louis, Missouri. In 2017, Simmons returned to school, and in 2018, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Business and Entrepreneurial Affairs from the University of Hartford's Barney School of Business in Hartford, Connecticut.

== Career ==

=== Modeling === At the age of thirteen, Simmons secured an exclusive modeling contract with Chanel and began working under the tutelage of Chanel's then designer, the late Karl Lagerfeld. Lagerfeld and Simmons's mentor-muse relationship happened at a time in fashion history when a multiethnic look like Simmons's was uncommon in high-end fashion advertising. As Simmons remembers: "Karl chose to put a mixed-race model on a Parisian runway before anyone else. By his example, I learned how to stand tall and claim my destiny - to dream bigger than I ever thought possible and command my dreams into reality."

After closing the 1989 Chanel haute couture show as "The Bride," Simmons went on to walk the runways for such fashion houses as Fendi, Valentino, Emanuel Ungaro, and Yves Saint Laurent as well as appear on covers and in the pages of such fashion publications as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Elle.

=== Fashion design === In 1999, Simmons launched the global lifestyle brand, Baby Phat. The label was launched as a women's wear off-shoot of the men's streetwear line, Phat Farm and overarching fashion label Phat Fashions, which Russell Simmons, her then-husband, had founded in 1992. Like Phat Farm and other black-owned fashion labels that emerged around the same period, Baby Phat was created to offer consumers color collections that were authentic to the culture. Mirroring the trajectory of the hip-hop music and style that inspired it, however, Baby Phat eventually grew to cross all barriers of culture and race, reaching mass-marketability and entering the lexicon of both fashion and popular culture. On September 15, 1999, Baby Phat debuted its first fashion show at New York Fashion Week. The show was held at Radio City Music Hall and streamed live to the Jumbotron in Times Square. With celebrities like Aaliyah, Lil' Kim (who also walked the Baby Phat runway in 2000), Missy Elliott, Mary J. Blige, and Paris Hilton in attendance, Baby Phat fashion shows were a frequent focal point during New York Fashion Week. Simmons concluded every Baby Phat show by walking the runway with her daughters, Ming Lee and Aoki Lee, in hand. Of being a mother and a business woman, Simmons told Refinery29: "Of course having my babies on the runway with me is still number one for me as a mother. But I also really loved our front rows. The celeb and musician friends that supported the brand also inspired it - really innovative women who pushed the world forward to embrace the urban lifestyle when many in the business and in society at large did not have the vision or foresight [to do so]. This was a movement. People forget that." Simmons was eventually appointed president and creative director of Phat Fashions, which included Baby Phat, Phat Farm, Baby Phat Girlz and Phat Farm Boys, thus becoming one of the first women of color ever to preside over a stable of fashion brands. During her tenure as Creative Director of Baby Phat, Simmons created an entirely new category of urban lifestyle apparel and accessories designed for women by women. Baby Phat's commercial success (the company was at one point estimated to be worth in excess $1 billion) and cultural impact ultimately drove the expansion of Phat Fashions into a multitude of new product categories that included jewelry, handbags, footwear, swimwear, outerwear, infant accessories and fragrance, all of which were distributed on a global scale. Over time, the Baby Phat fragrance portfolio grew to include a total of six perfumes: Goddess, Golden Goddess, Seductive Goddess, Fabulosity, Luv Me, and Dare Me, the last of which was produced in Partnership with COTY Fragrances. In 2010, Simmons parted ways with Phat Fashions and its parent company Kellwood. The following year, Simmons announced her new position as President and Creative Director of JustFab, a personalized shopping website. Simmons served in this role until 2015. Following her tenure at JustFab, Simmons began work on the development of a new fashion label, and in the pre-fall season of 2015, KLS by Kimora Lee Simmons debuted its first collection. The namesake women's wear line offers upscale apparel at entry-level price points in the American designer category. Following development, KLS by Kimora Lee Simmons was marketed for nationwide placement within the designer arena at high-end luxury retailers such as Bloomingdale's, Lord & Taylor and Farfetch.

=== Reacquisition of Baby Phat === On International Women's Day, March 8, 2019, Simmons delivered the keynote address at the launch of the She Innovates initiative led by UN Women's Gender Innovation Coalition for Change (GICC). There, Simmons announced to Bloomberg News the reacquisition and forthcoming return of Baby Phat, by Kimora Lee Simmons. The new Baby Phat would retain the same ethos of female-empowerment as did the brand's first iteration by being woman-owned, woman-led and, as ever, designed for women by women. Baby Phat relaunched in the summer of 2019 and then debuted a new signature collection in the fall of 2019. In an interview about the relaunch of Baby Phat, Simmons said to Women's Wear Daily: "The relaunch of Baby Phat will be comprised a mainstream sportswear collection for millennials targeted to the mid-tier retail level. Over the past several years, we realized that Baby Phat resonated with people and lives deep in their souls. Young people have an appetite for design with a purpose and place importance on a need for messaging that is similar to what Baby Phat represented in its prime and still can today."

=== Entrepreneurship and net worth === Simmons built a portfolio of investments in fashion, skin care, consumer goods and technology like Codage, an advanced technical skin care line based in France; Pureform Global, the first manufacturer of non-cannabis, non-hemp all natural CBD products; and Celsius, a "clean energy" negative calorie drink acquired in 2015. In the spring of 2019, Simmons co-launched Pellequr, a Beverly Hills spa with a novel take on the traditional Korean spa. As of 2021, Simmons was reported to have amassed a net worth of over $200 million.