Book review: The Towering World of Jimmy Choo

Published on Friday 29 May 2009 13:08

Kayt Turner sticks the boot into a shoe story that lacks polish

The Towering World of Jimmy Choo

Laura Goldstein Crowe and Sagra Maciera de Rosen

Bloomsbury, 18.99

I THINK it's fair to say that I Love Shoes. I also love gossip and intrigue – well, who doesn't? So when The Towering World Of Jimmy Choo thudded on to my desk, promising "a story of power, profits and the pursuit of the perfect shoe", I thought that all my Christmases had come at once.

Tamara Mellon – Jimmy Choo's president – is a stellar fixture on the party scene and anyone that she doesn't know really isn't worth knowing. Jimmy Choo is a multi-million pound operation and you've got to think that more than a few tears were shed and a few knives drawn along the way. Bring on the bitchfest.

Except, everything in this version is very harmonious. Very harmonious indeed. In fact, the bitchiest comments are reserved for descriptions of Tamara's wedding to American trust fund babe, Matthew Mellon. Apparently, mobile phones didn't work at the venue – Blenheim Palace – and so people were unable to call their chauffeurs when they wanted to leave. The horror.

I had always admired Tamara Mellon. Every picture of her in the papers mentions her brilliant business acumen and sharp commercial instincts. So I was quite looking forward to seeing how she had taken this all-conquering luxury goods company from a back street in Hackney to the wardrobes of every woman who matters.

You don't need a whole book to find the answer. Daddy bought it for her. The book makes much of Tamara's society contacts, which helped launch the shoes and get them into the influential fashion press, but that basically seems to amount to Tamara going to a lot of parties. I don't doubt that she networked like crazy, but she wasn't exactly sitting at a desk with her nose to the computer screen.

Who put the finance in place? Daddy. Who set up the American licensing deals? Daddy. Who did all the work in finding locations for their American stores? Er, that would be Daddy. And who footed all of Tamara's bills – even when she was married to the multi-millionaire Matthew? Right again.

The book itself does eventually get into the nuts and bolts of the business and is quite revelatory on how international commerce works. Who moves where – and why. Where the money comes from – and goes to. There's also a brief, but informative, chapter on the growth of the luxury goods market and the figures behind those now household names. It may have been common knowledge that Jimmy Choo himself actually had very little to do with Jimmy Choo, but just how little is laid bare here. Along with the details of how Choo had to pay Jimmy Choo Ltd in order to licence back his own name for use on his couture shoes.

It then gets into some quite tame stuff about how the company "managed" Tamara after her father's death. Without him to steer her in the right direction – and either curb or foot her extravagant impulses (such as overspending nearly $100,000 on her clothes allowance), there started to be friction between her and the company's money men.

That's not to say that they didn't value her input. She often described herself as the "interior designer" of the shoe, while Sandra Choi, Choo's niece and the company's designer, was its architect. But they didn't value her at 1 million a year – which is what she wanted – instead opting for a 600,000 package, which included a stylist and a chauffeur.

There's a woeful lack of actual celebrity in the book, aside from a little cattiness about Cate Blanchett. The other, astonishing, omission is, well, shoes. Jimmy Choo has some of the most beautifully constructed, dazzling footwear in the world. Not that you would know that from this book. There is only one shoe pictured , and it's the dullest thing you have ever clapped eyes on.

The book ends by briefly covering the legal battle between Tamara and her mother over Jimmy Choo shares, which each believes the other holds illegally, and the dispiriting news that Choo himself is having to close his couture shoe business. Times sure are tough – for some, anyway.