Kimora Lee Simmons Vs Chanel

The Baby Phat designer returns.

- Allison P. Davis

Kimora Lee Simmons spots someone at the table across from her. She’s at her usual haunt, sitting with legs crossed in a plush, poppy-colored armchair in the opulent lobby restaurant of the Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris. She makes eye contact with an older black gentleman sipping a beautiful drink in a crystal glass. He gives a smile and a nod of recognition; she returns the nod in kind.

Simmons, the onetime model and onetime mogul, loves it here. She has spent stretches of the summer in Paris since she was 13, when she was plucked from a modeling school in a St. Louis mall, signed to an exclusive Chanel contract, and selected to wear the coveted last look in Karl Lagerfeld’s 1989 haute couture show: a wedding gown for the fashion industry’s child bride. Success and money led to frequent stays at the Plaza Athénée like a barely adult Eloise. She threw her children’s birthday parties here. (Once, there was a Marie Antoinette theme.) She spent time here with her ex-husband, Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons, whom she met when she was 17 and he was 35.

Now, at 44, Simmons rents an apartment just around the corner but comes to the Plaza Athénée lobby several times a week, talking for hours and ordering snacks for her four children, three of whom are here today—Aoki Lee, 17; Ming Lee, 19; and Kenzo Lee, 10. (Her 4-year-old is at home napping.) Here, everything you touch is of lush velvet, the sounds are of spindly heels tapping on a marble floor and a harp playing, the smells are of the most delicate florals, and the tastes are of fresh white truffle sprinkled on pasta.