- Kimora let Aoki make her own mistakes, but was shocked when the relationship went public.
- Kimora knew the older man but not in that capacity, and felt his reputation ‘probably precedes him’.
- Kimora believes big age gap relationships can be ‘predatorial’ and ‘crazy’, based on her own similar experiences.
Kimora Lee Simmons is breaking her silence, more than a year after her daughter’s relationship with a man 44 years her senior went public.
The matriarch discussed the unconventional relationship on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast on Dec. 9, opening up to host Amanda Hirsch about how she felt watching her then-21-year-old daughter, Aoki Lee Simmons, date then-65-year-old restaurateur Vittorio Assaf.
“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 in a clip shared with People ahead of the podcast’s release. “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.”
The entrepreneur continued: “I don’t even know…first of all, I know this guy. But I didn’t know this guy in that capacity like with my kid or that you were even dating my kid. I know this guy growing up myself. He’s a restaurateur. I don’t know, I don’t want to get into troubles legally but I think his reputation probably precedes him. Is that okay to say legally?”
Assaf, the founder of Serafina Restaurant Group, met Aoki while vacationing in St. Barths.
“Were you like, ‘What the helly are you doing to Aoki,’ or no?” Hirsch asked.
“I was, but I didn’t say it in that way because it was this fast,” Simmons says, snapping her fingers. “And it blew up to be so much, so then you can’t be the mom that’s like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ But that definitely was the thing.”
“But 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,” she explained. “So that was what was so shocking. And you can’t say as a mom, and I’ve learned all these crazy things. You can’t give the, ‘I told you so,’ right now. You can’t give the, ‘What the hell are you doing right now?’ You can’t give those things right now.”
“She was going through it,” says Hirsch.
“Yeah, it was a lot,” responds Simmons. “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.”
The model and entrepreneur’s interview comes as she returns to E! with her new show, Kimora: Back In The Fab Lane. One clip from the reality show, in particular, has been gaining traction online, showing Aoki and her older sister, Ming Lee, getting into a heated argument.
After Ming tells Aoki she looks “healthy,” her younger sister takes that as a jab, insisting that in their household, “healthy means fat.” This clip was released shortly after Aoki uploaded a vulnerable post to Instagram, which included a caption that encouraged other girls to “eat or the brain don’t brain!”
“She was a good person, she was trying her very best to be what certain people wanted her to be,” Aoki began in her caption. “(But girls you gotta eat or the brain don’t brain! The decisions don’t decision! The choices don’t choice! I promise you that much).”
