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Tamara Mellon interview: For services to shoes - Telegraph
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Tamara Mellon interview: For services to shoes
Jimmy Choo president Tamara Mellon has risen to dizzy heights from tough beginnings. She tells Julia Llewellyn Smith about her fractured family, booming business and recent OBE.
BY Julia Llewellyn Smith |24 October 2010

World beater: In just 14 years Mellon has transformed Jimmy Choo into a global brand estimated to be worth ￡500 million. Photo: Heathcliff O' Malley

Tamara Mellon's life has always sounded as if it were modelled on a schlocky TV mini-series, and today's episode is no exception. It's Thursday and we're in the rococo lobby of the Ritz, the morning after Mellon, president of the Jimmy Choo fashion house, has received her OBE at Buckingham Palace.
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First, Mellon's eight-year-old daughter, Minty, descends the spiral staircase accompanied by a jolly nanny. I'm agog to see the heiress, whose mother is building a playground and swimming pool for her on two roof terraces of their Manhattan mansion. But Minty, in a check shirt, leggings and Ugg boots, appears disappointingly unspoilt, chatting sweetly away as she prepares to depart for New York - her school wants her back on Friday.
Mellon's slinky Ukrainian PA then checks her BlackBerry and mutters about supermodel Christy Turlington and Elton John (he hosted a gala to honour Mellon for her work for his Aids foundation on Monday), before accompanying me to her boss's suite. But Mellon isn't ready, so we return downstairs.
"I'm so sorry it's been chaotic," Mellon says when she eventually appears. "It's always like this when I'm in London." Aged 43, Mellon is extraordinarily pretty - though unnervingly similar to Samantha Cameron - with long dark hair and a fragile frame clad in a grey Alexander McQueen dress and set off - naturally - with black patent Jimmy Choo boots and a faux-leopardskin Choo bag.
Her trip to the palace was "incredible", she says. What did Minty think? "She was so well behaved - the ceremony lasted two hours," Mellon says. "She was with a friend of mine and apparently she couldn't believe how badly dressed people were! No, don't write that - say she was looking at how people were dressed…"
On a day when the headlines are dominated by drastic budget cuts,Black Stripes by Johnny Wombat_572,nike sb dunk mid, Mellon in Dolce & Gabbana displaying her gong could be interpreted as inappropriate. Why should a woman who sells shoes that cost between ￡300 and ￡2,000 be recognised when the rest of the country is bracing itself for job losses?
Even the Queen may have wondered what was going on. "She said,White A-line Sweetheart Beaded Applique Taffeta Satin Wedding Dress _1723, 'I hear you make shoes'," says Mellon in her soft, upper-crust voice. "I said, 'And bags too, ma'am.'"
But don't underestimate how much wealth bags and shoes can generate. In just 14 years Mellon has transformed Jimmy Choo from a small, bespoke cobbler into a global brand estimated to be worth ￡500 million. Mellon, who owns one fifth of the company, is the 64th richest woman in Britain. Not bad for a woman who left school with no qualifications. With 100 shops in 32 countries,christian louboutin wedding shoes, Choo fans include Michelle Obama (who wore Choo patent pumps to the White House inauguration), Meryl Streep and Madonna. Does the Queen wear them? Mellon smiles. "Some of the younger royals do."
Is Mellon even aware of George Osborne's deeds? "I haven't had time to read the papers today," she apologises. Given her customer base, her focus is likely to be not so much welfare clamp-downs but bankers' pay packets. So does she understand public anger at the news of yet another round of bumper bonuses? "What people don't realise is that there's a trickle-down effect. If the banker gets his bonus, he gives some of it to his wife who spends it at Jimmy Choo and that helps everybody who works for me." She employs 300 people. "That's a lot of families and a lot of kids."
Those families and kids have had little to worry about during the recession, during which Jimmy Choo has continued expanding. Much of its success comes down to Mellon's willingness to be a walking advertisement for her brand, the glamorous apotheosis of what every Choo wearer aspires to.
Yet she is far more than a jumped-up It Girl. Mellon has negotiated three private equity deals and fought off a hostile insider takeover bid. "For a woman, to consistently face off those City suits takes unbelievable grit," says a family friend.
The daughter of tycoon Tommy Yeardye, who turned Vidal Sassoon into an international brand, Mellon was born in Berkshire and spent
her childhood in Beverly Hills, with spells at English and Swiss boarding schools, before working in boutiques and at Vogue. Her destiny seemed to be that of a trophy wife - and,ghd styler, sure enough, she married Matthew Mellon, scion of an absurdly rich American banking family. But she never stopped working, and after? five years they divorced acrimoniously after his "drug binges" and her affair with Oscar Humphries, the 23-year-old son of the satirist Barry.
Since then there's been a string of celebrity boyfriends,nike air max classics, including the film star Christian Slater. Today, Mellon is single. "If I meet someone, great. I'm not really bothered," she says, pouring herself a cup of tea. "Minty and Jimmy Choo are my world."
Dividing time between the two isn't easy, though. "I've felt guilty since the day Minty was born," she says. "All her important school dates, like piano recitals and plays, are in my diary - it's a very tricky balancing act."
Why does she keep juggling, when money is not an issue? Rumours circulate constantly about Jimmy Choo's imminent sale. Mellon denies them. "There's too much growth in the business to leave. Anyway, it's important for women to work. They need to keep their independence, to keep earning and being challenged."
It doesn't take Sigmund Freud to deduce why independence is so vital. Like the best bonkbuster heroines, Mellon had a miserable childhood. Recently she described herself coming from a "really dysfunctional family where you're always told you're not good enough… I guess even in the face of my success, I still can't get the approval."
It was her family situation, she says, that stopped her academic success. "I was traumatised,hogan shoes uk," she explains, in a matter-of-fact way which suggests decades of therapy.
"Schools weren't as good then as they are now at spotting troubled kids. It was all going on around me, and I couldn't take it in."
Her quarrel is not with her adored father, who lent her ￡150,000 to found Jimmy Choo (he died in 2004), but with her mother, the former model Anne Davies, whom Mellon once described as a "sociopath". Recently Mellon successfully sued Davies for ￡5 million in stock that had been mistakenly allocated to her trust - a dramatic gesture since she clearly didn't need the money.
She is now, she says - again unemotionally - "estranged from my family" (her two brothers took her mother's side). That is mainly why last year she moved from London to New York. "My family has fallen apart and I wanted Minty to grow up near her father and his extended family. Yes, the past few years have been incredibly tough but I've managed [my way] through it and I'm feeling stronger and very positive."
This week Mellon is unveiling the first Jimmy Choo perfume; next she's planning lines of jewellery, men's shoes and watches. "We have a wish list. There's a lot of growth out there - in Asia, especially China - and a lot of new product lines. This isn't just about shoes and bags, it's about a whole lifestyle - the Jimmy Choo woman."
Mellon is ultra-polite and candid, but in her presence I feel like a mortal allowed on to the foothills of Mount Olympus. Only as we're winding up (Mellon has a board meeting) does she thaw, leaning forward and saying conspiratorially, "I'm so sorry about the gum-chewing." I hadn't noticed. "Oh good, I tried to keep it in the corner of my mouth. It's Nicorette. I keep giving up smoking, then starting again." It's a relief that Jimmy Choo woman incarnate does, after all, have feet of clay.