The former model revealed she spent $5,000 a month on phone calls as a homesick 13-year-old model working in Europe before modern tech existed.
Kimora Lee Simmons racked up thousands in long-distance charges and worked under conditions that would violate today’s child labor laws during her early modeling days in Europe.
The fashion mogul and mother of five opened up to PEOPLE about the steep cost of staying connected to her family after moving overseas at just 13 years old to pursue modeling.
“I was running up a phone bill,” Simmons said. “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.”
Long before FaceTime or Wi-Fi, Simmons relied on collect calls and credit cards to reach her mother back home in Missouri.
“You didn’t have calling plans and the Wi-Fi,” she said. “We didn’t have that. You had a collect call. 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?’”
Simmons left her hometown before starting high school and struggled with intense homesickness while living and working in Europe. At the time, she was modeling for luxury fashion houses like Chanel under the direction of Karl Lagerfeld.
Reflecting on her early start in the industry, Simmons noted that the work she did as a teenager wouldn’t fly under current labor standards.
“As I got older, I realized I was the youngest one,” she said. “Karl would even tell me things like, ‘What we did before is illegal now’ — labour laws and kids. So yeah, we were at it kind of early.”
Simmons’ multiethnic look was groundbreaking in high fashion at the time she began her career, helping her stand out on Paris runways. Simmons closed the 1989 Chanel haute couture show as “The Bride” and went on to walk for prestigious fashion houses such as Fendi, Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent and Emanuel Ungaro.
She also appeared on the covers of major magazines like Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar. Her modeling success laid the foundation for her later ventures in fashion design and business, including Baby Phat.
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