(Photo: Patrick McMullan)

Though the tabloids have been following their canoodlings since February, Baby Phat designer Kimora Lee Simmons and Oscar nominee and Calvin Klein tightie-whitie model Djimon Hounsou haven’t been forthcoming about how they met. It turns out they’ve known each other since Simmons’s modeling days in Paris. “He’s friends with Tyra and Naomi and Iman. We were always friends through friends,” Simmons said at the party for the 25th anniversary of Calvin Klein Underwear. She and Hounsou reconnected during awards season in L.A. “I’ve learned that track records are very important,” she says. “I thought they weren’t, but they are.” After all, “you can’t always change things about men,” says Russell Simmons’s ex. And Hounsou checked out. “You can’t dig up any dirt on him.” Certainly he’s got little to hide in those ubiquitous ads. “It’s weird seeing them everywhere,” she admits. “I can’t escape him—but I don’t want to.” Others want a piece of him, too: His free underwear have “been disappearing one by one,” she says. “We’ll have to check with the staff about that.”

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Related:

• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by Jada Yuan
• Table of Contents: September 17, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!