It’s the first truly cold day in New York this winter. Outside the coffee shop, moms are pushing bundled-up babies, and older couples are strolling even more slowly. Among them, Tweed-Simmons, 22, who’s also an actress and a singer, stands out. She’s wearing what she calls her “pimp coat” — a long, bright floral jacket with a velvet collar that used to belong to her mom, actress and Playboy model Shannon Tweed.
She grabs a doorman. “Would it be OK if I danced with you?” she asks. He looks as psyched as if she’s suggested they run away to Ibiza. He spins her around and dips her before she scurries on, posing in front of a red door, bending over so she can fling her hair in the wind (“There’s always time for a hair flip,” she says.) and holding out her arms like Kate Winslet on the bow of the Titanic to make her pimp coat blow behind her. The whole time she’s smiling.
It makes sense that Tweed-Simmons is a lot of fun. Her dad is known for wearing studded codpieces and platform boots and sticking his tongue out with abandon (He did this long before Miley ever did.). Her mom was 1982’s Playmate of the Year and an erotic-thriller movie star — think KISS’s party anthem “Rock and Roll All Nite” and Cinemax as the building blocks of her childhood. But until recently, Tweed-Simmons wanted nothing to do with stardom. Fashion — in particular, making clothes that fit women who were average sized — is what made her want to use her famous name. “I felt like I really had the chance to give girls confidence with affordable clothing,” she tells Yahoo Style. “If you have a platform, you should use it.”
Being a designer is also a way for her TO work in her own space. “When I’m singing, I’m Gene Simmons’s daughter,” she says. “When I’m acting, I’m Shannon Tweed’s daughter. With fashion, I’m just me. I’m not just ‘daughter of blank.’” “I had avoided being part of the industry for so long,” she says. “I’d say ‘I’m a singer’ and people would be like, ‘Do you sing rock?’ I hated being compared to my family.”
I can’t see many of her “daughter of” counterparts being as honest as she is — Ivanka Trump probably wouldn’t say she hates being compared to her father. Tweed-Simmons says she learned to be so straightforward from her very direct dad (In an infamous interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, Gene Simmons said about his codpiece: “The notion is if you're going to welcome me with open arms, you also have to welcome me with open legs.”). “My dad’s a little crass,” Tweed-Simmons says. “When I was little, I’d think, ‘Can’t you just be nice?’ He taught me that there’s being nice and then there’s lying. It’s better to be blunt and un-liked than shade the truth. I appreciate people who are honest.”
She’s a big-time advocate of body positivity. “I’m not a high-fashion model, and I’m not plus size,” says Tweed-Simmons, who’s 5’8” and fluctuates between sizes 8 to 12. “Which is weird for fashion, but not for life. A lot of designers that I love don’t fit me. I wanted to do cuts that would be flattering to girls who have some shape.” Growing up, she was the same size as her mom (“We shared clothes,” she says.) and had to endure comments about her figure on tabloid covers. “We went on a family vacation, and I was wearing a thong bikini like my favorite celebrity, Sofîa Vergara,” she says, “and someone took my picture. As a 17-year-old girl, I had to see my butt on the cover of The Daily Mail with the headline ‘Gene Simmons plus-size daughter.’ It made the global news circuit. I grew up a chubby kid and into a curvy girl. I was OK with it, but the world wasn’t. I have cellulite, stretch marks, and freckles, and that’s fine with me.”
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