Why is it nobody seems willing to say what they've been secretly thinking for years now: Kimora Lee Simmons is a freak. Perhaps it's the modelling pedigree and the years spent wearing Karl Lagerfeld's legendary couture. That and the jolting image of her mind-bogglingly slim figure, which, if you've only seen recent tabloid photos of her from the neck up, comes as a surprise because her puffed out face and big hair suggest a body of, let's say, wider girth.

Her pro-basketall-player height (6'4") further suggests that Kimora is a classic "Amazon women" all the way. (Ed. note: We think Amazons are super-cool.) But then there are those exceptionally slender legs and that lithe figure, stunningly displayed in a new series of ads for her fashion brand, Baby Phat. One look at the ads and you'll see what Lagerfeld saw and more importantly what hip-hop-culture mogul Russell Simmons saw and later married.

Russell may have married more than he bargained for. Kimora has developed something of a reputation among gossipy media types as a materialistic super beee-otch! But, hey, Russell was an admitted "serial model dater" since way back in the day (for more on model daters, see season one, episode one, of Sex and the City) so he may have been blinded by Kimora's elite status as an international catwalk star. Or, being the savvy entreprenuerial Blackberry-toting dynamo that he is, maybe he was thinking of all the synergistic opportunities as he gradually morphs into the hip-hop Donald Trump.

According to quotes in a recent New York magazine article, Lagerfeld and model Tyra Banks have experienced Kimora Lee at her worst ...

"It's a wonderful thing I've created with you," Lagerfeld told her that fall, "but now you're a $5,000-tote-bag-wearing monster, and for that, I am sorry. Now sit down and be quiet!" Kimora requested Tyra Banks as her roommate in one model apartment, and they tried to visit every Häagen-Dazs store in Paris. "She always had the new Prada bag and would laugh at me because mine was from Wal-Mart," says Banks.

On the business side, what's most fascinating is that recent Baby Phat ad campaign (see photos above). The brand and women's fashion line is a carefully architected spin-off (or line extension, as they they) from hubby Russell Simmons's Phat Farm clothing and retail empirelet. The ads use photos taken in the Simmons's sprawling home with Kimora and her children posing as models while uniformed Latina maidservants look on surrounded by parvenu opulence.

Some non-profit activist group somewhere is just itching to be offended by these ads. We just can't stop gawking at the spreads and trying to deconstruct them and distill the underlying message (see, kids, that Media Theory class in college wasn't a complete waste). But it may be much simpler than all that. Behind the ads is the basic fashion photographer's adage for compelling subject matter: show attractive people, doing attractive things in attractive places.

--Instamatic

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