Kimora Lee Simmons Talks Daughter's "Predatorial" Relationship

Teen Vogue Summit 2023 — Source: Jon Kopaloff / Getty

Kimora Lee Simmons has had many roles in her career – as a model, an entrepreneur, and a reality TV show star – but has always maintained that mother is her most important one.

That’s why it’s surprising that she says she learned about her youngest daughter’s age-gap relationship with a restaurateur many decades older the same way the public did, through the media. In 2024, Kimora and Russell Simmons’ then 21-year-old daughter Aoki was photographed on a St. Barth’s beach kissing Vittorio Assaf, who was then 65.

People confirmed back then that the two were dating, saying a source said that, “Aoki and Vittorio are spending time together and enjoying each other’s company.”

In a recent appearance on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, Simmons told host Amanda Hirsch that the relationship blew up so quickly in the press that she barely had the chance to respond.

“So then you can’t be the mom that’s like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ But that definitely was the thing,” Simmons said. “It went from 0 to 100 really quick, and I was like, ‘Aoki, I didn’t even know this was a thing.’ I found out when the world found out. So that was what was so shocking.”

It also put Simmons in the tough position of having to navigate her daughter’s choices while coming to terms with her own. Aoki’s father, Russell, is 68, while Kimora is 50. They started dating when Kimora was 18, via published reports, though it has always been whispered that perhaps Kimora was even younger.

“Yeah, it was a lot,” Simmons said. “It was a lot. But I do think in general, of those kinds of things, I feel like and having gone through, not exactly the same, but similar…that big age gap relationship, let’s just call it that. I do think it’s predatorial. We said all of that to get to what Kimora thinks about it. I think that’s predatorial and kinda crazy.”

Simmons says that the relationship fizzled out pretty quickly, even without her getting involved.

“I let my kids make their own mistakes, like I said. That’s the whole thing we were saying about living out your life in public, and I think that’s very, very, very tough,” Simmons said. “I don’t even think that was a moment for them, though. Or I should say the opposite. I think it was just that — a moment. I don’t think it was anything else.”

Kimora is the mother of five kids – her four biological children, Aoki, 23, and Ming Lee, 25, with ex Russell Simmons, Kenzo Hounsou, 16, with ex Djimon Hounsou, adopted son, Gary Lee, 16, and Wolfe, 10, with ex-husband Tim Leissner. A “bonus son,” Jayden, 19, has lived in her household since he was in the fourth grade. She’s currently starring with them in a reboot of her reality show Kimora: Back in the Fab Lane on E!. The original series, Kimora In The Fab Lane, ended in 2011 after airing for four seasons on the network.

“It’s like a chapter two of life,” Kimora says. “I do think things go in a cycle — it’s not just cliché. I’m living it.”

See social media’s reaction the age gap below.