Kimora Lee Simmons Is Staying Strong Following Public Feud with Ex Russell Simmons: ‘I’m a Tough Chick’

Kimora Lee Simmons wants everyone to know she’s doing just fine.

Following her public feud with ex-husband Russell Simmons, 65, last month, the entrepreneur and single mom of five, 48, told reporters at Essence Fest that she’s staying strong. “I’m always okay. You guys know I’m a tough chick.”

And while she’s no stranger to being a hot topic, it’s the love and support that her daughters have received that means the most to her. “We’ve been through a difficult time and I like for people to say, ‘I love Aoki. We love Ming,’ ” she shared.

“I want the girls to know, because they’re young and impressionable, that it’s okay, people go through things,” she continued. “The world loves you. If somebody forms an opinion of you based on two seconds of something they don’t know, then you’re not missing them.”

Her statements come weeks after she accused the former Def Jam Recording executive of threatening her and their children, Aoki Lee Simmons, 20, and Ming Lee Simmons, 23.

A day after Father’s Day, Russell posted an Instagram Story that seemed to be aimed at the Baby Phat designer. “Stop telling fathers they should have fought harder to see their children & start asking mothers why he had to fight at all,” Russell wrote.

Kimora then took to her own Instagram Story to share details behind the big dispute writing, “I’m so sorry to have to do this, but this man has been threatening my kids’ lives. I’m hearing so much more now. We won’t be bullied threatened or afraid.”

“Leave my kids alone,” she continued. “This narrative of attacking the only caregiver, the only parent in the home with the kids, the mom, AND the kids for one’s own shortcomings and embarrassments is dead. Dead. Dead.”
Coming to her mom’s defense, Aoki then posted a video of Russell seemingly yelling at her over FaceTime. “This is not someone who will accept help. This is just one screen recording sorry I don’t always remember to press ‘record’ when he calls my friends, my boyfriend, anyone, to get a chance to threaten and curse and go crazy,” the recent Harvard grad wrote.

“Some of us do think he’s mentally ill or experiencing something like dementia,” she wrote over a tearful photo of herself in a separate Instagram Story. “He really acts like he hates and does not know his children frequently.”

At the Essence Fest press conference — which the model did after a spot with Target at Caesars Superdome during night two of the festival’s Concert Series— Kimora spoke about the universality of the issues that come with being a single parent.

“I have famous friends who’ll say ‘I’m a single mom, it’s so tough,’ and the next day they get rammed in the press [with people saying], ‘How can you say this? Your life is not like our life,’ and that is not true,” she explained.

“If you are a single parent, you understand what single parents go through … You understand that family unit, you understand that struggle … You understand that having children is like having a broke bestie: You love them to death but they can never contribute to the dinner,” she joked before affirming, “Those things are universal.”