Kimora Lee Women's Fashion Brand

Kimora Lee Leissner is an American fashion model and fashion designer - the name this page uses, with her fuller married and professional names, Kimora Lee Simmons among them, used below. A model who became a designer and then a fashion-company president is a particular kind of brand founder: she had worn the industry, then designed for it, then run it. Everything in this profile should be read through that sequence, because the brands below - Baby Phat, Phat Fashions, KLS and Kouture by Kimora - are the chapters of one woman's move from in front of the camera to the top of the company.

In 2004, Simmons' then husband Russell Simmons sold his clothing line Phat Farm to Kellwood Company for $140 million. When Russell stepped down as CEO of Phat Fashions LLC in September 2007, Simmons - who was already creative director of Baby Phat, which was a branch off Phat Farm Industries - was promoted by Kellwood to President and Creative Director of Phat Fashions. Those are the business foundations, in figures and dates: a $140 million sale in 2004, and a promotion in September 2007 that put the Baby Phat creative director in charge of the whole Phat Fashions operation. Apparel Search's own Kellwood company profile is linked from this page.

Baby Phat, KLS and an Aspirational Lifestyle Brand

It was her goal to turn fashion label Baby Phat, launched in 1999, into an 'aspirational lifestyle brand'. That quoted goal is the key to the women's clothes in this chapter of her career: Baby Phat began as a branch off Phat Farm Industries, and its creative director wanted it to be more than a label - a lifestyle a customer aspires to, across what she wears and how she presents herself. Apparel Search's own Baby Phat brand page, in the B section of this directory, gives the label's own full record. Shop Baby Phat-era pieces with that ambition in mind: they were designed to be a world, not a garment.

Her high-end sportswear line, KLS, launched in fall 2007 - the same season as her Phat Fashions promotion, and a deliberate step into a higher register under her own initials. In 2010, Kimora left Kellwood. After she left, Simmons planned to launch her KLS collection and Kouture by Kimora Brands. The sequence is the turning point: the executive chapter closes in 2010, and the founder chapter reopens under her own names - KLS as her collection, and Kouture by Kimora as the second planned brand. A shopper dating pieces should use exactly these markers: Kellwood-era Phat Fashions product before 2010, and her own independent labels after it.

The KLS Relaunch: Beverly Hills and Bloomingdale's

In June 2015, Simmons relaunched her KLS label as a high end line, opening its first boutique in Beverly Hills. In 2016, the line began being carried at Bloomingdale's in the Aventura Mall. KLS is a new collection of bold yet streamlined ready-to-wear and accessories. Kimora Lee Simmons launched a luxury-priced fashion line for women who are juggling work, family and other aspects of life. That closing description is the mature brand stated completely: bold yet streamlined, ready-to-wear and accessories, luxury-priced, and designed for women whose lives are full - work, family and everything else - rather than for a life spent dressing.

Shop KLS on its own stated terms: streamlined means the clothes should work hard and move easily through a crowded day, bold means they should still register as designed pieces, and luxury-priced means construction and fabric must justify themselves at inspection - seams, linings, fastenings and fabric hand, checked as at any high-end house. The boutique-first, department-store-second path of 2015-2016 also tells a shopper where the line sits: launched as a destination brand in Beverly Hills, then carried by Bloomingdale's. The brand's official site, kls.com is linked in References below. A model and designer, Baby Phat's creative director, Phat Fashions' president from 2007, independent from 2010, and relaunched at the high end in 2015: Kimora Lee is the K letter's lifestyle-brand builder.

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