1/22/2023 0 Comments Mori lee mother of the brideIn 2010, Simmons parted ways with Phat Fashions and its parent company Kellwood. 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. īaby 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Simmons concluded every Baby Phat show by walking the runway with her daughters, Ming Lee and Aoki Lee, in hand. Blige, and Paris Hilton in attendance, Baby Phat fashion shows were a frequent focal point during New York Fashion Week. With celebrities like Aaliyah, Lil' Kim (who also walked the Baby Phat runway in 2000), Missy Elliot, Mary J. The show was held at Radio City Music Hall and streamed live to the Jumbotron in Times Square. On September 15, 1999, Baby Phat debuted its first fashion show at New York Fashion Week. 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. Like Phat Farm - and other black-owned fashion labels that emerged around the same period - Baby Phat was created to offer consumers of color collections that were authentic to the culture. The label was launched as a womenswear off-shoot of the men's streetwear line, Phat Farm and overarching fashion label Phat Fashions, which Russel Simmons - Simmons's then husband - had founded in 1992. In 1999, Simmons launched the global lifestyle brand, Baby Phat. 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." Īfter 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. As Simmons remembers: "Karl chose to put a mixed-race model on a Parisian runway before anyone else. 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. Career Modeling Īt 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. 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. Simmons is a graduate of Lutheran North High School in St. Kollock then sent Simmons to Paris, where she would soon find favor with fashion industry leaders and begin her modeling career in earnest. 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. In an effort to bolster Kimora's confidence, Kimora's mother enrolled her in modeling classes when she was eleven years old. Because of her height - 5'10" 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." Louis suburb of Florissant, Missouri, Simmons was a frequent target of bullying at school. 2.4 Entrepreneurship and Investment Portfolio.
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