Kimora Lee Simmons
4ms
Kimora Lee Simmons, born Kimora Perkins on May 4th, 1975, is a force of nature in the American business world. She's a visionary fashion designer, a captivating television personality, and a former supermodel who graced the runways of fashion's elite. From her teenage years signed with Chanel, to walking for Fendi and Valentino, and gracing the covers of Vogue and Elle, Kimora's journey is one of ambition and undeniable style. In 1999, she launched the global lifestyle brand Baby Phat, a testament to her entrepreneurial spirit. And in 2007, she invited us into her glamorous world with the reality television series, Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane.
Born in St. Louis, Kimora faced early challenges. Growing up in Florissant, Missouri, she was often a target of bullying, her height and multiethnic background setting her apart. Feeling "different," Kimora's mother enrolled her in modeling classes at eleven, a decision that would change her life. Two years later, at a Kansas City model search, she was discovered by an agent from the prestigious Paris agency, Glamour. This led to her move to Paris, where her modeling career truly began to soar. After graduating from Lutheran North High School, Kimora later pursued higher education, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Business and Entrepreneurial Affairs from the University of Hartford in 2018.
At just thirteen, Kimora secured an exclusive modeling contract with Chanel, working under the legendary Karl Lagerfeld. In an era where multiethnic looks were rare in high fashion, Lagerfeld championed Kimora's unique beauty. As she recalls, "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." After closing the 1989 Chanel haute couture show as "The Bride," Kimora continued to captivate audiences on runways for Fendi, Valentino, Emanuel Ungaro, and Yves Saint Laurent, and her image graced the pages of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Elle.
In 1999, Kimora launched Baby Phat, a global lifestyle brand that began as an off-shoot of her then-husband Russell Simmons's streetwear line, Phat Farm. Baby Phat aimed to offer authentic cultural collections for women, mirroring the vibrant energy of hip-hop culture. The brand quickly transcended its origins, achieving mass marketability and becoming a cultural phenomenon. The debut Baby Phat show at Radio City Music Hall during New York Fashion Week, attended by stars like Aaliyah and Missy Elliot, was a landmark event. Kimora often concluded her shows by walking the runway with her daughters, Ming Lee and Aoki Lee, embodying the fusion of motherhood and business. She described it as a "movement," celebrating innovative women who embraced the urban lifestyle when others lacked the vision.
As President and Creative Director of Phat Fashions, Kimora became one of the first women of color to lead a stable of fashion brands. She pioneered a new category of urban lifestyle apparel and accessories designed by women, for women. Baby Phat's immense commercial success, estimated at over a billion dollars, led to a global expansion into jewelry, handbags, footwear, fragrance, and more. Kimora's signature scents, like Goddess and Fabulosity, became iconic. In 2010, she parted ways with Phat Fashions, but her entrepreneurial drive remained. The following year, she became President and Creative Director of JustFab, a personalized shopping website, a role she held until 2015. In 2015, she launched her namesake line, KLS by Kimora Lee Simmons, offering upscale apparel at accessible price points.
On International Women's Day in 2019, Kimora made a powerful announcement: the reacquisition of Baby Phat. The relaunched brand, still woman-owned and woman-led, aimed to empower a new generation of millennials with its sportswear collection. Kimora recognized Baby Phat's enduring resonance, stating, "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."
Beyond fashion, Kimora has built a diverse portfolio of investments in skincare, consumer goods, and technology. She co-launched Pellequr, a Beverly Hills spa, and by 2021, her net worth was reported to be over $200 million.
Kimora's personal life has seen its share of public attention. She was married to Russell Simmons, with whom she has two daughters, and later welcomed a son with actor Djimon Hounsou. She later married investment banker Tim Leissner, with whom she has another son. In 2020, she adopted a fifth child. In 2023, Kimora filed a lawsuit against Leissner concerning significant forfeited shares.
Philanthropy is a cornerstone of Kimora's work. She has served on the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation and lent her voice to PETA's "Be an Angel to Dogs" campaign. In 2008, the mayor of St. Louis presented her with the key to the city, declaring March 14th "Kimora Day." In 2014, she established the Kimora Lee Simmons Scholarship Fund at FIT with a million-dollar donation to support aspiring fashion students from underserved communities. She is also a dedicated supporter of amfAR, The G&P Foundation, Keep a Child Alive, and the Hetrick-Martin Institute. Her humanitarian efforts extend to supporting refugees and migrant women and children, serving as Lead Global Ambassador for The Unmentionables. In 2018, she addressed The Global Innovation Coalition for Change, advocating for gender equality in innovation and entrepreneurship. In 2021, Baby Phat partnered with Smile Train for the #AllSmilesAreBeautiful campaign, and in 2022, a back-to-school giveaway benefited families in need.
Kimora's presence in media is extensive. She hosted the music and pop-culture series One World Music Beat and contributed to VH1 projects. She served as a judge on America's Next Top Model and starred in her own reality shows, Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane and Kimora: House of Fab, which offered glimpses into her professional and personal lives. Her producing work even earned her a Tony Award for Def Poetry Jam on Broadway.
Her book, "Fabulosity: What It Is & How to Get It," published in 2006, was a female empowerment lifestyle manual that received critical acclaim. She's also appeared in the Got Milk? campaign and inspired a Kimora Lee Simmons Barbie Doll. Kimora has acted in films like Beauty Shop and Brown Sugar, appeared in music videos, and co-hosted the talk show Life & Style.
Copied!
Kimora Lee Simmons (née Perkins; May 4, 1975) is an American businesswoman, fashion designer, television personality and former fashion model. As a teenager, she was signed with Chanel, where she became a model. Simmons has walked the runway for 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. In 2007, she ventured into reality television alongside her family, starring in Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane.
== Early life ==
Kimora Lee Perkins was born in St. Louis. 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 (she is African-American on her father's side and Japanese-Korean on her mother's), 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 Elliot, 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 Bloomingdales, Lord and 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.
== Personal life ==
Kimora Perkins married Russell Simmons in December 1998. They had two daughters and divorced 2009.
In May 2009, Simmons gave birth to her first son with actor and model Djimon Hounsou.
In February 2014, it was reported that she had married investment banker Tim Leissner and in April 2015, their son was born. At the time Simmons married Leissner, he was still married to his ex-wife, gave Simmons photoshopped documents showing that he was divorced from Chan, and created an email address in his ex-wife's name to convince Simmons that he had divorced. He continued the correspondence for over a year and continued using the email account for several years. In 2018, Leissner pleaded guilty in the 1MDB scandal and admitted being a double bigamist.
In 2020, Simmons adopted a son, making her a mother of five children. In February 2022, it was revealed that Simmons and Leissner were estranged from each other.
In 2023, Simmons filed a lawsuit against Leissner claiming that "shares worth about US$93 million that he was ordered to forfeit as part of his 1MDB guilty plea actually belong to her".
=== Philanthropy ===
Simmons has served on the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation.
In 2008, Simmons lent her voice and image to PETA in support of the organization's Be an Angel to Dogs campaign, which called for more humane consideration in the care and keeping of household pets. In the campaign, Simmons is pictured wearing angel wings designed by the costume maker, Martin Izquierdo, who is known for designing the angel wings worn by models in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Simmons has also protested with PETA. Additionally, she donated $20,000 to PETA's Angel for Animals Project, which provides sturdy, custom-made dog houses to needy dogs.
On March 14, 2008, at a homecoming ceremony held at Washington University in St. Louis the mayor of St. Louis recognized Simmons's contributions to society by presenting her with the key to the city and declaring March 14 Kimora Day.
In 2014, Simmons established the Kimora Lee Simmons Scholarship Fund at FIT with a personal donation of one million dollars to aid students from underserved communities who are pursuing careers in fashion. Additionally, Simmons is an active supporter of amfAR, The G&P Foundation, Keep a Child Alive, and the Hetrick-Martin Institute.
As of 2018, Simmons has done humanitarian work in support of refugees and in-crisis migrant women and children fleeing violence, persecution and natural disasters in their home countries. As Lead Global Ambassador for intimate health nonprofit The Unmentionables, Simmons has helped to fund the distribution of reusable female hygienic products and supplies to communities of migrant and refugee women entering Europe through Greece. In 2017, Simmons and her family traveled to Texas with The Unmentionables to help with relief efforts following the devastation of Hurricane Harvey.
In 2018, Simmons delivered an address to The Global Innovation Coalition for Change (GICC), in partnership with UN Women to drive industry wide change and advance women and girls in innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship. She currently serves as a Global Innovator for Change as an advocate for gender equality in the workplace. In September 2018, Simmons partnered with UN Women and GICC to help launch their Gender Innovation Principles and She Innovates calls to action.
In 2021, Simmons and Baby Phat partnered with Smile Train in the #AllSmilesAreBeautiful campaign to design and produce an exclusive limited edition All Smiles Are Beautiful t-shirt, with all net proceeds going to Smile Train's programs supporting mental health for children with cleft palates.
In August 2022, Simmons, Baby Phat and Phat Farm partnered with Family Dollar and Crayola to host a back-to-school giveaway benefiting families facing financial hardship in the Los Angeles area.
== Media and filmography ==
=== Television ===
Simmons has worked in television as a host, actress, reality star and producer. She was one of three hosts on the music and pop-culture weekly TV series, One World Music Beat, which aired in syndication from 1998-2001. Simmons also contributed to the VH1 projects Uncut New York Fashion Week and Party Fabulous. In 2003, Simmons appeared alongside Tyra Banks as a judge on season one of America's Next Top Model.
In 2007, Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane premiered on the Style Network. The reality series follows Simmons's daily life as she navigates the roles of business woman and mother. Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane aired from 2007-2011. In addition to starring in the series, Simmons produced four episodes of the show's inaugural season and executive produced ten episodes between 2009-2010. In 2013, The Style Network debuted Kimora: House of Fab. Unlike Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane, which showcases scenes from both Simmons's professional and personal lives, this second reality series focuses solely on Simmons's professional life as the Creative Director of online fashion company, JustFab. Kimora: House of Fab ran for one season with Simmons starring in and executive producing on each of the series's eight episodes.
Simmons received a Tony Award in 2003 for her work as a producer on Def Poetry Jam on Broadway.
=== Other media ===
Simmons is the author of the book Fabulosity: What It Is & How to Get It, which was published by Harper Entertainment in 2006. The female empowerment lifestyle manual received favorable reviews from such publications as the Washington Post and Boston Globe.
In 2006, Simmons joined the long list of celebrities from the fields of sports, media and entertainment who have donned milk mustaches for the Got Milk? campaign.
In February 2008, Mattel released the Kimora Lee Simmons Barbie Doll. Dressed in a faux chinchilla floor-length coat and hot pink thigh-high boots, mini skirt and peplum top, the doll was created under the direction Simmons to epitomize the brand identity she has cultivated across her life's many endeavors.
Simmons has appeared in multiple roles in television and films including Beauty Shop, Brown Sugar, and Waist Deep. She has also appeared in music videos for Ginuwine, Usher ("Nice and Slow"), and Rich Gang ("Tap Out"). Simmons has been a cohost of Sony Television's sydicated talk show Life & Style.
== Filmography ==
=== Film ===
=== Television ===
=== Video games ===
=== Music video appearances ===
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Kimora Lee Simmons blog posts Archived February 4, 2013, at the Wayback Machine on JustFab
Kimora Lee Simmons at IMDb
Kimora Lee Simmons at FMD
Simmons' interview at OSMOZ
Home
Languages