Kimora Lee Simmons is back and more grown up than the woman we saw here in 2010 at Aloha Tower. At the time, the former fashion model was selling “fabulosity” via her Baby Phat Kouture line of clothing and filming an episode of her Style network series “Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane.”
In the interim, the ex-wife of music mogul Russell Simmons split from actor Djimon Hounsou, with whom she has a son, Kenzo, 6, married investment banker Tim Leissner and gave birth to her fourth child, Wolfe. But her colorful personal life hasn’t slowed her professional life.
Her new eponymous clothing line launches at Bloomingdale’s Ala Moana Center this month. A representative from the Kimora Lee Simmons brand will be in town 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday and Friday to assist shoppers in Designer Collections, Level 2. Ten percent of sales at Bloomingale’s will benefit the Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children.
After leaving as creative director of Baby Phat, Simmons moved on to selling shoes and accessories online, but after a couple of years she found it limiting. “I wanted to set my sights on something higher. If you look at interviews with me from 100 years ago — that’s what it feels like — I always wanted to have a designer label and my own retail store. It’s what I set out to do, and now I’m doing it,” Simmons said by phone from her Los Angeles office. “I have a retail boutique in Beverly Hills and an atelier in New York, and this is my passion.”
She feels her customer mirrors her life. “I did Baby Phat for a younger woman who grew up with me and has been along on my journey. She gets me,” Simmons said. “Now she’s a little more sophisticated and refined in her taste. My pieces are still super sexy without being overly revealing.”
Her fitted dresses are architectural in their use of geometric shapes influenced by American Modernism. Color blocking in black and white creates positive and negative spaces that slenderize. Her palette for spring-summer 2016 is a sophisticated mix of royal blue, navy, cerise and white, with accents of Italian leather in chrome silver, ivory and black. Pieces start at about $300.
“I wear it all the time,” Simmons said. “The notion of ’90s power dressing really appeals to me, and I was drawn to the emphasis on the waist, angular lines and slim sheath dresses.”
As a woman of mixed African-American, Korean and Japanese heritage, Simmons said she was bullied as a child growing up in homogeneous Missouri. Already 5 foot 10 at age 10, she was discovered by a Paris model scout at 13 and whisked to the catwalks of Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent, catapulting her to life in the fab lane.
Now 40, memories of feeling insecure and taunted in her youth have led Simmons to speak out often about empowering women, and she lives her message of doing what one loves and believes in. “If I’m not feeling it, I move on, and that’s been true of businesses and husbands. I have no problem doing that.”
Today, in addition to minding her multiple business interests, her focus is on family. Simmons remains friends with her ex-husband Russell Simmons — father of her two eldest children, Ming, 16, and Aoki, 13 — and last year the pair invested more than $15 million in the fat-burning energy drink Celsius.
Of her busy life, she said, “I get tired all the time. I have a lot of kids! And my brands are my babies, too. We all get tired but what can you do? We have to keep going, keep laughing, keep smiling. I know I have to set a good example for my kids.”