Read Online In My Shoes: A Memoir by Tamara Mellon, William Patrick - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Tamara Mellon, William Patrick
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Business & Economics, Business, Rich & Famous, Corporate & Business History
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noticed Jimmy packing up all the food and everything else on the plastic tray—including the tray itself—to take home. Later, when we went through customs, they asked him to open his bag, and rolls upon rolls of toilet paper came flying out. He’d stolen all the paper and the soap and everything else he could grab from the hotel and stuffed it into his bag. It wasn’t even a nice hotel we’d been staying in. I pretended not to notice and simply walked on through.
In truth, my confidence in Jimmy was beginning to falter, not just because of his lack of sophistication but because of his lack of knowledge about shoe manufacturing. When his contacts came to nothing, Sandra and I found a book that simply listed all the factories in Italy and who they worked for. Book in hand, we left Jimmy at home and went back to Italy, cold-calling, knocking on doors to see if we could get an appointment. We were two young girls representing a brand they’d never heard of, with not so much as a single order to give them.
We made several of these exploratory trips, and when one of our flights to Florence was delayed, we started chatting with an Englishwoman, filling the downtime with a rambling account of what we were all about. She told us she had a friend in the shoe business named Barbara, and she offered to introduce us to her, which she did. Whenwe went to meet this Barbara, she offered to make some introductions on our behalf—for $25,000. It was a bit of a con, but we paid, and she did get us through some of the right doors. In fact, she introduced us to the factory that would make our first collection for us. But the real value she provided came some months later, when she introduced us to Anna Conti.
Anna had done manufacturing for Bally, and when we met her she was working for a company called Custom Foot, which created made-to-measure shoes. Somehow we were able to lure her away to become our exclusive manufacturing agent, and she set up her own business called IF, with Jimmy Choo as her only client. She offered to source factories, place the orders, follow up, make sure all the leather and fabric samples came in on time, do quality control throughout the run, then oversee shipping to make sure everything was on time. So as soon as we could design our first collection, the rest of the production apparatus would be in place.
But first there was the challenge of designing the collection, and I was by now facing up to the harsh realization that Jimmy was not going to be the creative partner I’d hoped for. Producing shoes for his couture clients was his bread and butter, all he cared about, and all he did. At one point my father offered him £1,000 for each design he produced, but Jimmy simply never could wrap his head around the fact that we had gone into business with him on the expectation that he would actually help us create a global brand, which it was his job to design.
His reluctance to contribute had put us way behind, especially considering that we needed something to show at the Fashion Footwear Association of New York trade show in August and at another eventlater in the fall in Düsseldorf. To make the deadlines, we desperately needed sketches at the factory. Grudgingly, he worked up a few with Sandra, and we faxed them to Italy.
Ever the optimist, I spent the summer, when not scouting factories in Italy, phoning up Saks and Bergdorf, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, even Neiman Marcus, trying to line up buyers to come see us at the show in New York. I even rang up the specialty shops like Scoop NYC and Chuckies Brooklyn. Everyone recognized Jimmy’s name from those credit lines in
Vogue
and from his association with Princess Diana, so at least he was earning his keep in that one respect.
But our selling samples barely made it to New York on time, and when we saw them we were horrified. They were covered with black scuff marks, glue was visible along the seams, and the stitching was awful. They were so bad that
In truth, my confidence in Jimmy was beginning to falter, not just because of his lack of sophistication but because of his lack of knowledge about shoe manufacturing. When his contacts came to nothing, Sandra and I found a book that simply listed all the factories in Italy and who they worked for. Book in hand, we left Jimmy at home and went back to Italy, cold-calling, knocking on doors to see if we could get an appointment. We were two young girls representing a brand they’d never heard of, with not so much as a single order to give them.
We made several of these exploratory trips, and when one of our flights to Florence was delayed, we started chatting with an Englishwoman, filling the downtime with a rambling account of what we were all about. She told us she had a friend in the shoe business named Barbara, and she offered to introduce us to her, which she did. Whenwe went to meet this Barbara, she offered to make some introductions on our behalf—for $25,000. It was a bit of a con, but we paid, and she did get us through some of the right doors. In fact, she introduced us to the factory that would make our first collection for us. But the real value she provided came some months later, when she introduced us to Anna Conti.
Anna had done manufacturing for Bally, and when we met her she was working for a company called Custom Foot, which created made-to-measure shoes. Somehow we were able to lure her away to become our exclusive manufacturing agent, and she set up her own business called IF, with Jimmy Choo as her only client. She offered to source factories, place the orders, follow up, make sure all the leather and fabric samples came in on time, do quality control throughout the run, then oversee shipping to make sure everything was on time. So as soon as we could design our first collection, the rest of the production apparatus would be in place.
But first there was the challenge of designing the collection, and I was by now facing up to the harsh realization that Jimmy was not going to be the creative partner I’d hoped for. Producing shoes for his couture clients was his bread and butter, all he cared about, and all he did. At one point my father offered him £1,000 for each design he produced, but Jimmy simply never could wrap his head around the fact that we had gone into business with him on the expectation that he would actually help us create a global brand, which it was his job to design.
His reluctance to contribute had put us way behind, especially considering that we needed something to show at the Fashion Footwear Association of New York trade show in August and at another eventlater in the fall in Düsseldorf. To make the deadlines, we desperately needed sketches at the factory. Grudgingly, he worked up a few with Sandra, and we faxed them to Italy.
Ever the optimist, I spent the summer, when not scouting factories in Italy, phoning up Saks and Bergdorf, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, even Neiman Marcus, trying to line up buyers to come see us at the show in New York. I even rang up the specialty shops like Scoop NYC and Chuckies Brooklyn. Everyone recognized Jimmy’s name from those credit lines in
Vogue
and from his association with Princess Diana, so at least he was earning his keep in that one respect.
But our selling samples barely made it to New York on time, and when we saw them we were horrified. They were covered with black scuff marks, glue was visible along the seams, and the stitching was awful. They were so bad that
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