The Towering World of Jimmy Choo: A Glamorous Story of Power, Profits, and the Pursuit of the Perfect Shoe [Hardcover]

Lauren Goldstein Crowe (Author), Sagra Maceira de Rosen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 28, 2009

A smart, sexy business book for the readers who made Trading Up a bestseller: the tale of a London society girl who built one of the most talked-about shoe brands in the world.

The Towering World of Jimmy Choo examines the world’s seemingly insatiable appetite for luxury goods by telling the behind-the-scenes tale of one of the most talked-about brands of our age. Jimmy Choo was a London shoemaker with a few famous clients when Tamara Yeardye, a London society girl, convinced him to launch a factory-produced luxury shoe line. Twelve years later, Jimmy Choo is a household name, and Tamara still presides over what is now one of the most successful luxury brands in the world, worth some $350 million. But along the way she was tested at every turn. The story of how the Jimmy Choo brand got to where it is today is one of love, hate, sex, fashion, finance, drugs, celebrity, power, intrigue, and ambition. And every word of it is true. Compelling to followers of both fashion and business, The Towering World of Jimmy Choo takes readers into a complex and rarified world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Backstabbing and bitchery dominate this tale of woe from fashion journalist Crowe and Rosen, head of the Luxury & Retail division of Reig Capital Group. Dreary writing hobbles what could have been an inspiring portrait of Jimmy Choo's rise from his humble origins (Choo started making shoes at age nine in Malaysia) to the company's astonishing success and sale for $333 million in 2007. The story primarily follows Tamara Mellon, a socialite who convinced Choo to mass-produce his shoes, finally becoming president of the company. Despite an intriguing picture of the luxury trade in '90s London, where the supply of sexy shoes was almost monopolistically controlled by Manolo Blahnik, the details of the corporate in-fighting becomes repetitive and dull; by the time Jimmy becomes dissatisfied with the partnership and Tamara Mellon goes through an ugly divorce, readers are unlikely to care. It turns out that high fashion loses a great deal of its glamour when you examine the business nitty-gritty rather than the glitz. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* As the world economy continues to reel, one burning question prompted by journalist Crowe and financial analyst de Rosen’s riveting history of the ups and downs—and ups again—of the Jimmy Choo brand: Will there continue to be a market for high-end luxury goods? The answer is a toss-up among today’s pundits. Then again, so is the response to the question posed first by the authors: Does Jimmy Choo represent a new business model for luxury brands—or was it simply in the right place at the right time? There is something Sex and the City–like about Jimmy Choo’s rise to fashionista prominence: it’s the tale of many machinations, many different owners (three in less than one decade), and clashes of outsized personalities, incuding Jimmy Choo (yes, he exists!), the Malaysian shoemaking talent; Tamara Mellon, the celebrity president (and her parents); Matthew Mellon, her former husband and an American banking scion–cum–party guy; and Robert Bensoussan, a farsighted CEO and entrepreneur—among dozens of other celebrities and characters. A fascinating, well-written chronology that draws a chillingly accurate behind-the-scenes portrait of a contemporary fashion brand. --Barbara Jacobs

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; 1 edition (April 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596913916
• ISBN-13: 978-1596913912
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #694,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lauren Goldstein Crowe has written about the fashion industry for the last 10 years. She was most recently the writer of Fashion Inc., a daily online column about the fashion and luxury goods industries for Conde Nast Portfolio. Her first book, The Towering World of Jimmy Choo, was published by Bloomsbury in April 2009. She is currently at work on her second, a profile of the fashion muse Isabella Blow that will be published by St. Martin's Press in 2010. Previously she was a Senior Writer at Time magazine in London. At Time Lauren wrote two cover stories: The Guys From Gucci was a detailed look at how Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole turned around the ailing fashion house and made it one of the industry's great success stories. The story also marked the first time that Ford and De Sole had ever been photographed together and it was the first time that a fashion CEO appeared on the cover of Time. Ralph's European Invasion detailed the plans of America's largest fashion designer, Ralph Lauren, for building his business in Europe. She also conceived and launched Time's first-ever fashion supplement, Time Style + Design. Now produced in New York, Style + Design comes out five times a year and reaches an audience of over two million readers. In June 2003, Lauren won Time Inc.'s highest honor, The President's Award, for her work on the special. Prior to Time, Lauren was a writer at Fortune magazine in New York where she covered fashion and luxury goods. She came to Fortune from Fairchild Publication's DNR, a weekly trade paper covering men's fashion, where she served as the European Collections Editor. Lauren has written freelance articles in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines including Paris Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, the New York Times, British Vogue, the Financial Times and the Times. She has appeared as a fashion expert on CNN and Bloomberg Television and has been interviewed for numerous radio programs in the US and the UK, including the BBC World Service. Lauren has a master's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and undergraduate degrees in English and History from the University of Wisconsin--Madison. Lauren is American and has lived in London since 2000.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Your Jimmy Choos aren't, April 22, 2009

By 

mojosmom (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Towering World of Jimmy Choo: A Glamorous Story of Power, Profits, and the Pursuit of the Perfect Shoe (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Jimmy Choo, the shoemaker, hasn't had anything to do with Jimmy Choo, the shoes, for quite a while now. That's what this book is about - the way a small, artisanal shoemaking company catering to a select group of wealthy women was turned into an international luxury ready-to-wear brand featured on television and the red carpet.

One of Mr. Choo's customers was a young woman named Tamara Yeardye, a socialite with business in her blood. She saw the potential of the business, and used her social and business connections to raise the funds to capitalize on it. Convincing Mr. Choo, though, was even harder, but she did. The saga of Jimmy Choo (the company) is a microcosm of the world of start-ups, IPOs, leveraged buyouts, private equity firms, all the pieces that made up the financial picture of the late '90s and early 2000s. And it's also the story of some very powerful personalities, and how their personal lives and scandals affected the company.

Honestly, I wasn't sure I was going to like this book. The blurbs, and certainly the first chapter, read like a gossip magazine. But slowly and inexorably I was drawn in by the vivid way the authors describe the financial machinations, the growth of the company through multiple sales, the dealmaking. It's easy to be misled by the initial portrait of Tamara Yeardye Mellon posing in "cleavage and stiletto shoes" by her nude photograph. Despite her social butterfly image, and the very real scandals she was involved in, she is one smart, driven and ambitious cookie.

The authors are, respectively, a journalist specializing in fashion and luxury goods, and an equity analyst and founding partner of a private equity firm. It's not difficult to tell who wrote what, and the way in which the book bounces back and forth between Yeardye's personal pecadilloes and high finance is a bit distracting. Kudos, however, to Ms. Maceira de Rosen for explicating complicated financial dealings in a way that makes them clear and understandable to the lay person.

The story of Jimmy Choo is, to me, a sad one. True, he is now a wealthy man as the world measures wealth. But he and his niece (who had worked with him in his shop but now works with Yeardye Mellon) do not speak. And the man who, with his art and careful craft, made the beautiful shoes that first attracted Yeardye's attention now cannot use his own name without someone else's consent.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Business, Personality and Luxury, May 20, 2009

By 

Jack D. Maser (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Towering World of Jimmy Choo: A Glamorous Story of Power, Profits, and the Pursuit of the Perfect Shoe (Hardcover)

A Choo, his shoes, many capitalists, an investigative reporter and an equity analyst in luxury goods - Put them together and you get Crowe and de Rosen's book The Towering World of Jimmy Choo. In fact, this tale is not just about a cobbler who had a flare for design and quality, but about many aspects of the luxury clothing/accessory business world. What holds the interest of a non-high finance or business person like myself is the fascinating mix of personalities driven to be the best at what they do and the capitalist system in which they achieved or failed.

In several chapters, shoes seem not to matter at all. Rather, Crowe and de Rosen introduced me to the business of luxury and the entrepreneurs and managers at its highest end. Indeed, one problem that I had was keeping track of all the names that were dropped. Not being in fashion or luxury, I suspect that I recognized about half the names. For this high recognition rate, one must give credit to the advertising departments at Givenchy, Versace, and a few others! Hopefully, readers more in tune with this industry will recognize more.

I think business majors would benefit by reading this book. It provides insight into acquisitions, mergers and deals as well as the business acuity possessed by Tamara Mellon and others seeking to make their fortune in luxury and glamour. True, Tamara had Daddy's money to back her, but it was her drive and vision that brought a relatively obscure maker of shoes for wealthy women to the international attention of women in the upper middle class. At one point Robert Bensoussan, a primary Jimmy Choo manager, came to Phoenix Equity Partners to jointly set up an investment vehicle to hold luxury acquisitions, one of which was Jimmy Choo Shoes. The Phoenix managers never heard of this brand and were skeptical, so Bensoussan suggested that the managers go home and ask their wives what they thought of Jimmy Choo shoes. The next morning these same managers returned with great enthusiasm for the venture. As for Jimmy, he just wanted to design and make shoes for select clients.

This is a must read for people in the fashion field, especially luxury fashion, and for business majors. It is a good read for people, like me, just interested in learning about a heretofore unknown area.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun and Enlightening Account of the Luxury Goods Business, August 20, 2009

By 

Marc David Miller "www.DiscoveringRussia.com-... (New York, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Towering World of Jimmy Choo: A Glamorous Story of Power, Profits, and the Pursuit of the Perfect Shoe (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I grew up in the luxury goods business-my father owned a textile company, and his wife was in marketing at Hermes, Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, and La Prairie. Till now, I have not read a book on the industry that wasn't either a hagiography or written for a neo-literate. Luxury goods are a multi-billion dollar business, and there is a reason that a brand becomes established. The Towering World addresses how Jimmy Choo became a household aspirational product, both through clever marketing, its unique history and the keen business sense of its principals.