Kimora Lee Simmons Reacts to ‘Shock’ of Daughter Aoki Lee Dating a Man Who Was 44 Years Older: ‘Predatorial’ 

Kimora Lee Simmons is opening up about how she really felt when her daughter, Aoki Lee Simmons, briefly dated a much older man in April 2024.

In a clip from the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, shared ahead of the Tuesday, Dec. 9 episode, the entrepreneur chats with host Amanda Hirsch about watching her then-21-year-old model daughter spend time with then-65-year-old restaurateur Vittorio Assaf, whom she met in St. Barths.

“What was your reaction to that in real time?” Hirsch asks.

“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 begins. “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.”

She goes on to explain that while she already knew Assaf, she never expected to see him linked romantically to her daughter.

“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,” she continues. “I know this guy growing up myself. He’s a restauranteur. 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 is the founder of Serafina Restaurant Group, and he and Aoki met while vacationing in St. Barths, a longtime favorite travel spot for the Simmons family.

“Were you like, ‘What the helly are you doing to Aoki,’ or no?” Hirsch asks.

“I was, but I didn’t say it in that way because it was this fast,” Simmons replies, 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.”

She adds that everything escalated almost instantly — and she was as surprised as anyone watching online.

“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,” says the mom of five. “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,” notes Hirsch.

“Yeah, it was a lot,” Simmons agrees. “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.”

Four days after it was confirmed that Aoki and Assaf were spending time together, a source close to the Simmons family said the situation had already fizzled.

“Not only is it ‘over’, it was never a thing,” the insider said. “Aoki is learning to navigate her private life in a public sphere. And that can be difficult. However, Kimora was concerned to see her daughter in that kind of relationship due to what she herself went through.”