Child Phat is coming again.
Kimora Lee Simmons Leissner has personally bought the favored womenswear model that she created 20 years in the past and can relaunch it later this 12 months.
Talking to WWD on Worldwide Ladies’s Day, the designer, mannequin, and entrepreneur introduced the label’s return however declined to reveal the acquisition worth or the corporate from which she bought it, solely saying: “We needed to hunt round to seek out it.”
Leissner launched the ladies’s streetwear model as an extension Phat Farm, the lads’s label run by her then-husband Russell Simmons’ Phat Fashions firm. She served as its inventive director from 2000 to 2010 and later as president.
Within the early 2000s, Child Phat was one Phat Fashions’ most pritable manufacturers with gross sales over $1 billion. When Phat Fashions offered to Kellwood Firm in 2004, Leissner continued to function inventive director earlier than parting methods with the model in 2010.
When Child Phat relaunches this summer season, it is going to be a “mainstream sportswear” model aimed toward millennials with mid-tier pricing. Leissner will faucet into her “wonderful private archive” for the gathering, which can characteristic “retro” components together with new appears.
Her two teenage daughters, Ming Lee and Aoki Lee Simmons, impressed her to revive the model. “It’s good timing for this,” mentioned Leissner. “Over the previous a number of years, we realized the model resonates with individuals and lives deep of their souls.”
A collaboration can even be half the relaunch, however Leissner is maintaining particulars underneath wraps. “We’re working quick and furiously and have quite a bit up our sleeves,” she mentioned.