How Kimora Lee Simmons' Baby Phat Became Y2K's Favorite Family-Run Fashion Label
Model, designer, mother, and more, Kimora Lee Simmons is the matriarch of one of the aughts' favorite fashion labels. On Simmons' birthday, look back at the rise and and reinvention of Baby Phat.
Fashion was a major part of Kimora Lee Simmons and Russell Simmons' story from the start. The pair met at a New York Fashion Week show in 1992, when Kimora Lee was 17 years old. At the time, the young model was making waves on the catwalks and was particularly favored by Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld. Russell had his own success as co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, also establishing his clothing brand Phat Fashions that same year. In 1998, the fashion and hip hop power couple wed.
The following year, Russell expanded Phat Fashions with a womenswear clothing line named Baby Phat, which at the time of its founding only featured the Phat Fashions t-shirts adapted for women. Seeing its potential to be something more, Kimora Lee took the reins, leading Baby Phat into a definitive era of Y2K style. With bedazzled baby tees, velour tracksuits, and runway shows featuring the likes of Lil' Kim, Baby Phat became an intersection of womenswear, hip hop, and streetwear.
With the Simmonses at the helm, the brand was tied not only to their celebrity but their lifestyle. Russell's music industry friends like Mary J. Blige, Nas, and Janet Jackson sat front row at Baby Phat's fashion week shows, while Kimora Lee's model friends like Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell wore the brand. Moreover, the designer's Life in the Fab Lane imprint can be seen in the glitzy brand collaborations—including a cat logo-emblazoned pink Visa card and a jeweled Motorola flip phone—that marketed Baby Phat beyond just a fashion label.
Throughout Baby Phat's rise, Simmons made her family a part of the label. Her two daughters with Russell, Ming Lee Simmons and Aoki Lee Simmons, both made runway appearances throughout their early childhood, joining the designer for her final bow on the catwalk. They also were featured in Baby Phat's campaigns, which the designer also starred in. After she and Russell divorced in 2006, her son Kenzo Lee Hounsou (who she had with actor Djimon Hounsou) also joined Kimora Lee and her daughters on the runway as an infant. She also has a son with current husband Tim Leissner, Wolfe Lee Leissner, who Simmons kept close at her fashion week presentations in the mid-2010s under her namesake fashion label.
Although the brand faded into obscurity in the 2010s, it made its return in 2019 with Simmons once again joined by her two daughters, this time with the girls helping their mom market Baby Phat to Gen Z. The relaunch—which was fittingly announced on International Women's Day—brought back the brand's cursive and cat-emblazoned logo, Y2K-era velour tracksuits, and bedazzled details just in time for the greater resurgence of early aughts trends. Following the marketing model that worked so successfully for Baby Phat before, the Simmons women are all central to the label, starring alongside each other in its glam campaigns.
There's no doubt that Baby Phat would have fared differently without Simmons and her family at the helm. When the savvy designer became president of the label in 2006, she became one of the first Black and Asian women to lead a billion-dollar company. Now, with a new generation of Baby Phat fans putting their own spin on Y2K trends, Simmons feels she is navigating familiar terrain. In a 2019 interview with Fashionista, she said of bringing back Baby Phat's style, "I raised my kids this way, I raised a whole generation of people that way and I want them to know we're still here, we're doing it."
