Jimmy Choo co-founder Tamara Mellon is using a direct-to-consumer model, collaborations (including a CDB foot cream) and a mobile closet to grow her namesake label.
This year, her brand teamed with fashion labels A.L.C. and Frame on exclusive footwear collaborations, and it launched a mobile shoe closet that is traveling across the country.
Make no mistake — it wasn’t Mellon’s lavish corner office. The designer sits at her desk alongside her team of 57 employees in an effort to foster a sense of community. It’s one example of how she’s continuing to shake things up. “I was ready to create something different for women,” said Mellon, whose namesake shoe collection ranges from $350 for strappy metallic leather sandals to $1,695 for black suede waist-high boots.Also important to Mellon in creating her brand was addressing the gender pay gap. She said she left Jimmy Choo in 2011 over a salary dispute.
When Mellon was testing the water, “nobody could wrap their head around what I was doing,” she said, adding that poor timing led her brand to have to file for bankruptcy protection. “It was the way forward. I had new investors that wanted to come in that believed in what I was doing, and it was the right path to get there.”
The age-old work-life conundrum resonated with Mellon firsthand. After all, Mellon relocated from New York to L.A. to be closer to her longtime partner, Michael Ovitz, who co-founded Creative Artists Agency. Ovitz said he remembers the moment well. When he approached Mellon, all he could think about was, “What I was going to say when she said, ‘No,’” he said. Then he laughed before adding, “I was trying to come up with something clever as a second shot.”
He remembers the first time Mellon mentioned her see now, wear now concept. Six years ago, they were in Capri, Italy, walking in 100-degree heat, and passed a store that had winter goods in the window. “She said, ‘This model doesn’t work anymore. We have to change it.’ She was really ahead of the curve,” Ovitz said, adding, ‘I’m impressed with her as a businessperson and as a creative person.
By then, Mellon had garnered a reputation in the tabloids for being a party girl, an image underscored by a substance-abuse problem. Mellon checked herself into rehab, determined to get her life on track and to trade her editorial gig highlighting designers for a job as a designer.
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