*Kimora Lee Simmons built one of the most recognizable fashion brands of her generation, but when it came time to sell, she says she walked away with far less than the deal was worth.
Appearing on the April 7 episode of the “Aspire With Emma Grede” podcast, the 50-year-old designer spoke candidly about the sale of Baby Phat, the brand she built from the ground up into a billion-dollar cultural phenomenon. “You live and you learn, I probably made — I think we ended up selling … it for 100-and-something million dollars. I probably got $20 million of that, or less. And the entire sale was based on Baby Phat,” Simmons said, PEOPLE reports.
According to The New York Times, the deal was valued at $140 million. Despite Baby Phat being the centerpiece of that transaction, Simmons says she was largely kept out of the loop. The mother of five explained that she “missed all of the preliminary conversations,” adding, “I wasn’t privy to the fact that these [conversations] took place.”
Baby Phat began as a women’s wear extension of Phat Farm, the menswear label founded by her ex-husband, Russell Simmons. Under Kimora’s leadership as creative director and president, it evolved into one of the defining brands of the early 2000s, generating revenues exceeding $1 billion at its peak, according to Women’s Wear Daily.
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The Kellwood Company moved to acquire Baby Phat and its parent company, Phat Fashions, in 2004, and the brand eventually ceased operations in 2010. Simmons reacquired Baby Phat in 2019 and has since relaunched it with both Gen Z-ers and a new generation of consumers in mind.
“I call it kind of a relaunch. I just think because of everything we’ve been through, throughout COVID and everything, it seems like your life is always a relaunch every time you give birth to a different iteration of, you know, your baby, which this is,” she told PEOPLE in 2023.
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