Kimora Lee Simmons told PEOPLE that modeling for Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld in Europe had a major impact on her phone bill when she started walking runways in Paris at 13 years old
“My phone bill was like $5,000 a month because back then that was when it was real long-distance,” recalls the 50-year-old
The entrepreneur grew up in Missouri before being discovered
Before supermodel Kimora Lee Simmons starred in Usher’s “Nice & Slow” music video in 1998, welcomed five kids starting in 2000 and eventually became an entrepreneur, she was walking runways in Paris as a teen.
In an exclusive interview alongside daughter Ming Lee Simmons for PEOPLE’s World’s Most Beautiful, Kimora revealed that modeling for Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld in Europe — far away from her hometown in Missouri — had a significant impact on her phone bill when she was 13 years old.
“I was running up a phone bill,” recalls the 50-year-old businesswoman of her early modeling days in the late ’80s and early ’90s. “My phone bill — this is crazy — my phone bill was like $5,000 a month because back then that was when it was real long-distance.”
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Kimora Lee Simmons in 1991
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“You didn’t have calling plans and the Wi-Fi. We didn’t have that. You had a collect call,” she adds. “You could either pay for it yourself on your credit card or bill it to someone else. I remember being like, ‘Where’s my mom?’ ”
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Kimora then remembered what Lagerfeld, who died in 2019, once told her.
“As I got older, I realized I was the youngest one, and then Karl would even tell me things like, ‘What we did before is illegal now.’ So I realized that, and then I have … labor laws and kids. So yeah, we were at it kind of early,” Kimora says, seemingly referring to labor laws such as the Child Model Act, which was passed in 2013, that helped teen models.
Robin Harper
Kimora Lee Simmons and daughter Ming Lee Simmons in 2025
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In Kimora and Ming’s interview for the World’s Most Beautiful issue, the mom of five also shared that her fashion legacy will be passed down to her children, with her bestowing them with things from her closet.
“Everything. Everything. That’s why I don’t understand why Ming wants to come here and be Miss Independent today,” Kimora says of Ming, 25. “Everything! All my bags, I have a great collection of bags. I have great luggage. I have great jewelry. Even if it’s not pieces that you would wear today — it’s too bling bling for you — but I have great stuff!”
Read the original article on People
