A Fashion Footwear Pioneer Is Treading on New Terrain

VITAL STATISTICS:

NAME TAMARA MELLON

CURRENT JOB PRESIDENT, JIMMY CHOO

FIRST JOB SELLING T SHIRTS ON LONDON’S PORTOBELLO ROAD

INSIDE TRACK WORKED AT BRITISH VOGUE

CLAIM TO FAME PUT JIMMY CHOOS ON SEX AND THE CITY

Tamara Mellon wishes some people would stop seeing her as a lucky girl who took a clever gamble with a loan from Daddy. Says she: “I keep being asked, ‘Haven’t you made enough money? Don’t you want to stop working?’ People would never say that to a man. I’m in my prime right now. This is just the beginning.”

In fact, this fashion fairy tale began 11 years ago, when Mellon, 39, then an accessories editor at British Vogue, spotted the potential of an East London shoemaker. With seed capital in the form of a £150,00 ($307,000) loan from her father Tommy Yeardye, who made his fortune with Vidal Sassoon hair products, she set about turning Jimmy Choo into a global brand.

Her strategy involved sidelining Choo, who maintains a bespoke business and is no longer part of the company; relentlessly supporting his niece by marriage Sandra Choi, whose designs have been key to the brand’s success; and learning the language of business along the way. A partnership was formed with Equinox Luxury Holdings in 2001, and by 2004, when Lion Capital acquired the majority shareholding, Jimmy Choo was valued at $207 million. Earlier this year, Jimmy Choo was acquired by private-equity fund TowerBrook for $379 million. Mellon is thought to have netted about $49.2 million from the deal, the majority of which she has reinvested in the company.

Sitting in her office in South Kensington, London, Mellon bristles as she recalls comments suggesting that she sit back and enjoy her wealth. “It’s the absolute opposite. I’m very committed. Jimmy Choo is my baby. There’s significant upside left in this business, and it would be far too soon to walk away from such an exciting challenge,” she says. That upside includes a deal with Selective Beauty to roll out a Jimmy Choo fragrance. “And we’ve got over 60 shops and could easily double that,” she adds, stretching out her spectacular legs, tipped with mules four inches high.

One normally wouldn’t comment on the physique of a company president, except that Mellon herself has exploited this asset, maintained through rigorous daily workouts. She is the brand’s best model, the jet-setter seen on the red carpet and at all the best parties who looks spectacularly good in her Jimmy Choos, and has always believed that legions of women—famous or not—would want what she wants.

What she wants now are clothes to go with her heels. When she realized that all her favorite dresses were vintage Halston, she phoned her friend the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, and they became investors in the Halston company, along with private-equity firm Hilco Consumer Capital, the majority shareholder. Although Mellon has promoted TV and movie product placement for Jimmy Choo with considerable enthusiasm, there’s a chance to go further with Halston: she hopes Weinstein will supply the biopic. “A movie turns a brand into a household name. Fashion magazines reach a million, but this is how you reach 100 million,” Mellon says.

Her thoughts are hardly radical. Even her insistence that what Halston needs is a “designer who won’t ignore the dna” isn’t new. That formula has been tried, with lackluster results, three times in recent years. The fourth hire is Marco Zanini, most recently at Versace working alongside Donatella Versace, who will now work with Mellon and the Hollywood stylist Rachel Zoe, also a part of Halston’s creative advisory team.

Though Mellon does not give the impression of being a particularly original thinker, she is, say those who have faced her in business negotiations, possessed of a dogged determination. Divorced from Matthew Mellon of the American banking dynasty, with whom she has a daughter, she attributes her success to a combination of ambition and instinct. “My intuition is always spot-on,” she insists, “but my brain doesn’t always follow it, so I try to stop myself intellectualizing too much.”