Aoki Lee Simmons Interview

Model and recent Harvard graduate Aoki Lee Simmons has been in the spotlight since childhood—but you wouldn’t know it. And, as it turns out, she didn’t know it either. 

The daughter of model and designer Kimora Lee Simmons and the Hip-Hop label Def Jam Recordings co-founder Russell Simmons, she may have grown up on Baby Phat runways, but she spent most of her time immersed in the world of academia. It was here that she gained her impeccable work ethic, balancing a tight schedule of classes from 6 AM to 6 PM (sometimes even 8 PM), club and school volleyball practices, violin and piano lessons, model UN meetings, SAT preparation, and more. As a self-described “type A” personality, Simmons thrived in this setting—leaving little wonder at how she ended up enrolling at Harvard University at the young age of 16 years to study Government and Classics. It’s also why she managed to balance a full course load with a budding modelling career (though, she admits, she could have done so in a healthier manner…but more on that later.) From the GOV 20: Foundations of Comparative Politics classroom to a rainy Tommy Hilfiger runway, she ran back and forth between Cambridge, Massachusetts and New York City—the latter where I managed to pin her down for an interview. 

Now settled in the Big Apple, she’s focusing her energy on embracing the uncertainty of her early twenties. Early morning shoots, last-minute international flight changes, busy fashion weeks, and evening events mean that no two weeks are the same for Simmons, who welcomes spontaneity with eager and open arms. Taking each day as they come, she embarks on every creative endeavour with wide eyes and a skilful blend of artistry, business, resilience, and curiosity—matched only, perhaps, by her mother. Connecting with me via Zoom, Simmons delves into the privilege of education, embracing childhood, figuring out her duty with her platform and throwing away her 10-year plans… 

SW: What is a typical day like for you these days? 

AS: That is what I have been trying to figure out myself! I think every recent college graduate is shocked by the change from a structure in school schedule to the adult world. I always joke that I was “extra school” during my school years, which is a nice way to say I was a mega nerd and very intense about the whole thing. The switch to both general NYC adulting and the fact that I’m in a creative industry without the in-office 9-5 structure to slot into, this summer has been wild, to say the least! I’m still figuring it out. I’ve got shoot days, travel days, fashion week days with multiple shows and events, days I work on my other projects, and then lots of unexplainable days in between! I’ve got ADHD so I love it. It keeps me interested and excited about life! 

SW: What are your favourite kind of days?

AS: Shoot days are for sure my favourites—long days but with fun and creative people. Everyone is practising their own art form, whether that’s photography, styling, or makeup. Everyone is really invested in the finished product. That is the best energy to be around on any project. I could do it for 16 hours (and I have!) and have fun the whole time. 

SW: What were your earliest memories of the fashion/modelling industries? Do you remember the first time you stepped on a runway? 

AS: This is so funny, but I have no memory of any runway…including six months ago. I basically black out and remember the feelings or thoughts before and after but genuinely have no idea what happened or how it looked until I see a picture or video later on. My Baby Phat runway show memories are amazing. All the backstage excitement and running around, talking to the models and begging someone to give me the tiniest drop of makeup or something when my mum forbade it. Being with my sister, being excited to see our matching outfits. I look back at photos and don’t know much but I know I had fun because I’m waving, twirling, smiling, running away from my mum, you name it, I was doing it! 

SW: What was your childhood like? What were you interested in as a kid? 

AS: My childhood was actually really chill! My mum is such a trailblazer but she has a super traditional Asian mum side. Lots of violin, piano, and homework. I was very lucky that from a young age my mother told us, “You are a child, your job is good grades and good behaviour.” That really gave me the freedom to focus on my academic interests. I had very little weight on my shoulders. People don’t discuss that enough in the topic of privilege, it’s not just nice toys or something, but the freedom to focus on being a kid without adult responsibilities. That is why I admire perseverance so much. Sure, I was able to go to Harvard when I had all the time in the world to study and focus and those conditions were perfect, but I wasn’t balancing a job, supporting others financially, worried about bills like so many other young people! I don’t think I would have gotten in with any of the things my mother, for example, was handling at the same age. Hyper-focus is a privilege, I’m only really learning to multitask now! One of my best friends who I admire the most in the world put herself through Harvard and now an Ivy League Law school, and she supports other people at home. 

SW: Were you aware as a young child that you were in the public eye? Is there a moment where you had that sort of realisation? 

AS: My mum was very insistent that we be kept away from that. If someone recognised her in the street she’d make up a story about meeting them at Starbucks or something. I got an iPad when I was 11 and was able to look up my parents for the first time—eventually my mum took it away because I’d bring her an article from 2005 and go, “Um, excuse me, did you…?” And she was like, “Give me that damn iPad”. She’s going to hate me for saying this, but the first article I read about her was Unbearable Fabulosity in Vanity Fair. I guess the journalist joined us on a family vacation (not that I remember) and it’s my mum at her funniest and most outgoing. It’s always fun to see your parents as their younger selves. I remember reading it and saying, “I see why Mummy became a star!” Her energy is infectious. It’s fun to know so many people love her as much as I do. So I’ll call that the realisation—and a great one at that. 

SW: What impact did growing up so publicly have on you, particularly as a young girl going through puberty and the natural insecurities that come from that time? 

AS: Another thing I discovered on that same iPad was less fun. This was early in the forums and celebrity blogs era of the internet, and I discovered hundreds of comments and discourse about my looks. It was terrible, as an 11-year-old, to see all the debates about whether I got the bad genes and articles about how such a beautiful woman could have such an ugly kid. Every time a paparazzi photo of me came out there were debates on whether or not I was getting any cuter! It used to get to me but now I just genuinely feel bad for adults (and they are still there!) sitting on the internet talking about children. It comes from a place of hate I could never understand. I can’t imagine having a bad thing to put out into the world about a child’s looks.

SW: What role did academics play in your life growing up?

AS: I was blessed to grow up in a very education-oriented household. My mother gave me everything she never had. She wasn’t able to finish college while modelling, but she got very close. As a young model travelling the world supporting yourself, the first thing you want to buy is probably not tuition. But she marched herself right up to UCLA when she was in town and put herself in school. Not many young people in her position would do that. And she kept getting absences and struggling because she was never in the same place, but she was committed to education. And she didn’t have the encouragement and constant support I had. She only had a few credits left and recently finished them, right as my sister graduated high school. So honestly, I spent every minute of my education knowing I was blessed and lucky and drawing on her strength. My mum has never steered me wrong. If she thought it was a good idea, it’s a damn good idea! She has always made it so clear to me that if I want to get more degrees, in anything – science, medicine, niche history – she will support me. She once told me I could stay in school forever and learn to my heart’s content. I was able to genuinely love learning because of that, she made it so enjoyable and welcoming and fun. She indulged every niche interest, if I loved Rome I could go to the library that day and come home with 800 books. If I wanted to study minerals and geology I was going to have whatever rocks, tools and a microscope. She took me to visit the Yale Classics department. I added all the pressure myself, to get into a certain school or reach a certain goal. But if I was learning, my mum was happy, and that’s the best way to get a very academic child. I admire her so much because it’s not as if she was surrounded by “Ivy League” this or that, even as a mother. She’d go into the nerdiest, most uptight academic of places with me. I went to a gifted school for high IQ students because I was struggling at a normal school being too far ahead. She marched me up there in her five-inch heels and said, “I need an enrolment form, please. Oh, there’s a test? When’s the test? She’s ready for it.” My mom is really rare among entertainment/celebrity parents. She’d go into spaces where she was not always the most welcome, where mums in their polo shirts and loafers gave her hella side eye because she was always the most glamorous, fabulous, and beautiful mum you could imagine! They rarely believed she was a mum at all. But she’d go anywhere to advocate for me, no matter what...can you tell I love my mum? 

SW: Definitely!!! I’ve read a bit about your experience attending Harvard while the university was in the spotlight for the Supreme Court case on affirmative action. What was the environment like during your time in college in regards to this and how has it impacted your view on such topics?  Does it motivate you to speak up and use your platform? 

AS: Honestly, this topic frustrates me so deeply now. I’m at a point where I’ve researched the history of this country, studied the process and effects of systematic racism in this country, the way it was built economically and socially on the backs of Black slaves, and continues to benefit off of Black oppression. The discussion of affirmative action is quite literally those benefitting, who see correcting that as an unfair punishment. Slavery was the engine of America’s rapid growth into the biggest economy in the world. White Americans benefit from being part of that economy and building perpetuating wealth and power within it every single day. Wealth and power (much like education) begets more wealth and power, often at exponential rates. So yes, affirmative action is a corrective measure. Is it not a perfect system, but some real corrective action for the next 400 years is quite literally the least this country can do. One of the most proven indicators for future academic attainment is the academic history of your family. How on earth could Black people have developed those kinds of trends, when they were consistently barred from education? There are no Black “old Ivy League” families because that was literally against the rules for most of the Ivy League’s history. We could not attend at all. I get frustrated because it’s so often a debate either done in bad faith or complete ignorance. No logical person could ask whether or not corrective action is needed in our educational system at all when higher education was reserved for white men as a rule for most of American higher education’s history. You don’t see a need to correct that? 

SW: How did you – logistically and emotionally – balance college and your modelling career?

AS: I will be totally honest, I didn’t. It was very one foot in front of the other, lots of unhealthy habits, all nighters, tons of coffee. Looking back even just a few months, I see so many areas where I could have built a system to better look after myself. My friend Jane Li recently told me entertainment is a marathon not a sprint. Her dad is the legendary actor Jet Li, who has certainly had a marathon of a career at sprinter level intensity, so she would know! I am super prone to burnout that you don’t see coming—I just say, “I can sprint, I can be the exception, I won't burn out,” but you will and I learned that the hard way. Currently, I feel like I never want to translate another sentence in Latin. I know I'll come back around, but I went a little too hard. Pacing myself is not something I’ve figured out. I’m just as ambitious and driven about my modelling career, but at least it’s something I know I need to do.

SW: What do you strive to say with your platform? How have you found your voice and what’s most important for you to use it for? 

AS: This is the question that actually gives me the most anxiety at the moment, because it’s a platform I’m so grateful for, and I want it to be meaningful and worth something to others. And now with modelling, I see it growing right in front of my eyes! All I can say is rest assured I want it to say something. In fact, I am insistent that it adds and does not detract from the world, and I’m trying to have more forethought and planning. Up until now I have just been speaking and posting from the heart and learning as I go. While not foolproof, it is honest, and I’m really touched that people can see that, no matter how many mistakes I make. My dad has always been so fond of the Muhammad Ali quote, “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth,” and that’s something I was taught to live by and never lose sight of. And what a room I’ve been given! So the rent is rightfully high. And every day I watch my life and “room” get more beautiful and exciting, and I have these amazing experiences and I’m pursuing what I love. And I’m aware that rent is getting higher. Every blessing I receive I’m reminded to keep thinking about what I want to do for the world and how best to do it. It’s a great cycle to be in. Feel blessed and think about blessing someone else!

SW: How do you balance keeping up with social media for your career while preserving your own mental health?  

AS: Also another one I don’t really “do” but I aspire to have that balance! I occasionally drop off the face of the (social media) earth because I will randomly be trying to make a post and it’s just too late at night or something and my brain will go, “This is stressful, nope, need a break”, and I always try to listen to that little feeling. I have yet to reach the stage in my self-awareness where I can plan for decompression time, I have that little screen timer and most days I just turn it off. Social media is such a powerful and enjoyable way to enhance, share and talk about what you do and be inspired by what others do. It can supplement your intake of the news, help you stay up to date with friends. But you don’t realise the negatives as quickly, because there’s so much to do on there. Sometimes it’s important to set aside time to consume nothing, do nothing, and detach from that exciting but strange connectedness with what feels like the entire world through a little screen! 

SW: Is there anyone that’s inspiring you right now in the industry?

AS: I recently shot with a photographer who inspired me, oh wait, it was for Rollacoaster just now! We had huge fun on this cover shoot. Katherine Goguen is so cool. She's a documentary filmmaker and a fashion photographer and tells such cool stories with both. I actually have some ads saved that I had no idea she shot. I would come across them and think, “Oh I love the story/the vibes here”. It reminds me of older famous 90s photographers, who have a whole narrative going on in one simple shot! I’ve always loved a good story and as I was lucky to get to know Katherine on set, I feel I can see her documentary background in her fashion shots even more.  

SW: Do you have a bucket list or a 10-year plan or something of the sort?

AS: I’ve had so many 10-year, five-year, 20-year plans. I’m very type A and actively fighting that tendency in myself. Recently, it’s been super liberating to say, “I have no idea.” I’m the first to admit I was a little rushed as a teenager. I pushed myself super hard and I was always counting down until graduation, until I can apply to college, until I can ace this test. Because I knew the outcome. That is why I’m enjoying this phase in my life so much. I’m enjoying all the newness of it and discovering my creative interests day by day, waking up in New York and being on option for a job and not getting it but getting something else to try or learn. Figuring out how to hang in there for the long term—sure you can give all the energy you’ve ever had for one NYC fashion week, but how do you pace yourself and grow over multiple seasons without burning out? It’s all very interesting and new to me. I’m so used to counting down academically, to knowing what the outcome is, waiting for something predetermined. I feel like for the first time in my life I have no idea where this is going or the end goal. So rather than the pressure of counting down, I’m just enjoying every day I get to do something new within the field. I see it as my first season “counting up”. We don’t know where we are going, but it’s fun and amazing so far!