Fabulosity: What It Is and How to Get It by Kimora Lee Simmons

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Fabulosity (n): 1: A state of everything that is fabulous. 2: A quality ascribed to that which expresses glamour, style, charisma, power, and heart. The Boston Globe describes Fabulosity the book as "a hip-hop primer on how to be successful for female entrepreneurs or women in creative fields." No matter how you slice it, Kimora Lee Simmons' lifestyle guide for potential female power players contains smart tips, great diva gossip, and an entertaining tone.

From the Publisher

Fabulosity (n): 1: a state of everything that is fabulous 2: a quality ascribed to that which expresses glamour, style, charisma, power, and heart

Kimora Lee Simmons knows what it means to have fabulosity -- and she wants to tell you how to get it.

In this empowering new book, Kimora -- a top model, wife of hip-hop legend Russell Simmons, mother to two daughters, a national media presence, and president and creative director of the multimillion-dollar Baby Phat company -- shares her personal secrets of success and fabulosity.

Kimora knows that in today’s ultracompetitive world, it’s not enough for women just to be smart or dress well. With too much to do and competition everywhere, the savvy woman must know how to combine feminine glamour with professional power, business ambition with personal values, and confidence with heart. Kimora is the living picture of all these things.

What are Kimora’s secrets to achieving her goals, her signature fabulosity? One is her ability to identify and build upon her own unique talents and strengths. In Kimora’s case, she brilliantly combined the two worlds she knows best -- the high fashion and hip-hop scenes -- to create Baby Phat, her ultrasuccessful hip-hop inspired lifestyle brand.

How do you uncover and develop your own special talents? Kimora shares her step-by-step guide to achieving your wildest dreams, including her 16 laws of success, which cover everything you need to become the woman you want to be.

Whether you’re college-educated or street smart, just starting out or at the top of your game, Fabulosity has something to say to you. Learn how to cultivate Power, Independence, Confidence, and Positivity in everything you do, whether it’s finding Mr. Right, snagging that corner office, or rocking the latest fashion trend. Packed with useful lessons and Kimora’s personal tips, this book will be your instruction manual to empowering yourself, turning your individual talents into permanent success, and unleashing your inner fabulosity.

Kirkus Reviews

Simmons-glam model, owner of the Baby Phat clothing label, wife of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons-offers advice for achieving the bling lifestyle. As Simmons reminds us in this self-help manual for the 21st-century gal, she had it rough growing up and had to work for her success. She came of age in St. Louis, not the friendliest of towns for a girl of Japanese, Korean and African-American descent. (As a gawky teen, her hybrid looks earned her the school nickname "Chinky Giraffe.") A fast ascension into the modeling world at 13 got her away from all that, and now she's not just married to a multimillionaire but also the head of her own affordable glam fashion line. Here, Simmons lays down the laws of fabulosity, some 15 in all, as lived through her own fabulousness it. A rah-rah barrage of self-actualizing advice, this how-to is divided into somewhat arbitrary sections ("Work and Power," "Image and Body Law" and so on). The laws are for the most part enthusiastic cheerleading anthems for adolescent girls (Law #1: "Work yourself into a frenzy of high hopes and aspirations"), especially ethnic minority teens, at whom the book is aimed (Law #6: "Activate your incredible female power to deal with adversity"). Along with laying down rules about keeping ahead in business and not letting the haters get the best of you, Simmons provides fashion advice whose basic tent is: the more the better ("Carry an extra-large bag in cherry, emerald, or orange-Not beige, not camel, and definitely not black"). Enthusiastic to a fault, a rhinestone-studded, fur-lined checklist for the next generation of glamazons.

Product Details

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Fabulosity

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

So this is the jump off. I'm gonna start with the fundamentals: my ground zero for success. I call it the "Grand Aspiration Theory" -- the G.A.T. -- and it's pretty simple. It goes like this.

1. High aspirations breed frustration.

2. Frustration breeds motivation.

3. Motivation pushes you to action -- whether you take tiny baby steps or huge strides.

4. Action breeds confidence; you start to feel in control.

5. Confidence is cumulative: Once you start acquiring it, you get more and more of it.

6. Soon enough, you prove to yourself that you're a star who can surmount any obstacle and achieve whatever you decide you want to achieve with your life. You're on a roll!

And all this because at one point, you let yourself wish you had something that other people told you was way out of reach.

I've always had high aspirations. Even as a small kid, I was never satisfied with the status quo and was deeply competitive with myself: I always wanted to enhance things and make them better, and I pretty much always believed I could. Where this strong opinion of myself came from is hard to say. Partly it was due to my mom. She brought me up on her own in St. Louis, Missouri, and being a first-generation Asian immigrant, she had high expectations for her only child. Partly it came from my absentee dad. Since I didn't see much of my father, I subconsciously turned my insecurity into action and thought, "If I don't take charge of my life, nobody else will." I know all the statistics and what the numbers say about the benefits of a two-parent family, but it's not always the reality -- and I think it's fine either way. Since I was raised by my mother alone, I came out more empowered, not less. From what I saw, women were the center of the world! We are the center of the universe! I had the proof in my mother that a woman can do anything, even though the time, the situation, and everything else may be against her.

I'm a Taurus, which means I am acquisitive and pretty stubborn about doing things my way. So it's not surprising that the clues to my ambition started popping up pretty young in the one arena I had some control over -- style. When I was eight, my mom decided I should attend a Girl Scout summer camp outside St. Louis so that I'd keep busy during the day. She worked for the government as a social security administrator in charge of thirty people, and I normally went to babysitters after school, but summertime required more planning. The Girl Scout set-up was nothing fancy -- just a place where regular kids from town would go by school bus to scamper around the woods and learn how to tie things in knots. But when I heard the words "summer camp," I figured, "I'll do summer camp times ten." Where most kids were outfitted in sensible neutrals and navy-blue shorts, I insisted on a perfect, white-on-white sporting ensemble: a crisp Izod polo shirt, Jordache shorts with stripes on the side, and squeaky clean K-Swiss sneakers. The fact that white clothes require major upkeep when your daily activities include dodgeball and Twister in the grass didn't faze meone bit. If I had to use a toothbrush to keep those sneakers box fresh, so be it. Such was the price for style.

Some would call it picky; I'd call it a natural penchant for Fabulosity and a desire to rise above the rest. Why blend in with the ordinary? Why be happy with the same-old, same-old? If everyone else is rocking beige, it'd be just plain silly not to rock magenta.

My insistence on style at all costs was also a small act of rebellion. Although our house was long on female self-empowerment -- my mom was a self-made woman who always told me, "You can do anything" -- it was short on glamour. There wasn't much cash to throw around on frivolous things like fashion, so naturally that's what I wanted most. It drove my mom nuts because she hated to shop. She'd compromise by taking me to the one-stop shop where they had everything -- from shoelaces to hair bows. Once there, I had to unleash my own meticulous vision and go to major creative extremes to get the most bang for the buck. Since I was pre-pubescent, most of my fashion sense revolved around color, usually purple. (It was a Prince thing, I'm sure). I spent hours picking out the elements to make a complete monochrome ensemble: purple shirt, purple sweater, purple pants; purple socks, purple sneakers, and purple laces. I'd also carefully watch the way my older sister (from my father's previous marriage) put outfits together and use the funky pieces she passed down to me to create my own looks.

As I got more advanced, I developed a two-tone thing. Red and black perfectly alternated from head to toe: red shirt, black vest, red skirt, black tights. I had to match everything to the T, and the distribution of color had to be even. Mom would despair, "Kimora, you don't have to coordinate the exact same shades of red. You can wear a purse that's a different tone of the same shade." But I knew better. To be polished and pulled together, I had to be hooked up. I always remember it because everybody would talk about me -- I guess that's when I made the connection between style and power. (Maybe those rigid dress codes offer a glimpse of my psychology as well: Even today, I need order in all aspects of my life to keep chaos at bay. I'm all about lists, charts, polaroiding my outfits, and doing the numbers three times over.)

Continues...

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Excerpted from Fabulosity by Kimora Simmons Copyright © 2006 by Kimora Simmons. Excerpted by permission.
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