A Fitting Arrangement: The Women Behind the Choos
Life really can’t get much better than this for a shoemaker: a company that has grown from scratch to $50 million in four years, a luxury brand favored by movie stars, and a waiting list as long as a pair of pony-skin boots to buy $450 to $3,000 shoes at boutiques from London to Los Angeles.
The name is Jimmy Choo, but in fact, the ready-to-wear shoes are designed by Choo’s niece, Sandra Choi, with the help of company president Tamara Yeardye--two shoemakers with the world at their feet.
“It’s taken a lot of sweat, tears and time,” Choi said.
Not to mention glitter, silk, reptile skin, crystal, leather laces and embroidery. And heels. Four-inch heels, three-inch heels, kitten heels and pumps. (And for those who cannot be brought to heel, a few odd pairs of flats.)
Throw in a dangerously pointed toe here, a sling-back there, perhaps a touch of fur, and you’ve got a Jimmy Choo shoe. It is strappy, arched like a cat and revealing--as in toe cleavage. “It’s always very sexy and elegant,” Yeardye said.
“That’s very hard to achieve--sexy and elegant together,” Choi said. “Because you can be sexy and slutty.”
“These are on the right side of sexy,” Yeardye said. She is wearing red alligator sling-backs that clearly are not on the wrong side of sexy.
The daughter of a fashion model and a Vidal Sassoon partner, Yeardye was born into the business and raised in Beverly Hills. She used to pull Gucci and Halston numbers out of her mother’s closet to play dress-up as a kid.
Yeardye came across Jimmy Choo at British Vogue, where she helped arrange fashion shoots. Desperate to find the right pair of red shoes at a moment’s notice, she would call Jimmy Choo and say, “We need them for tomorrow.” And the Malaysian-born shoemaker would deliver his handmade shoes.
Choo’s custom-shoe business began to grow, and Choi, a native of Hong Kong, dropped out of design school to work for her uncle by marriage. “I didn’t know anything about shoes,” Choi said. “He taught me how a shoe works, how it is made, how a flat piece of leather becomes a three-dimensional shoe.”
Together they turned out about 15 pairs of shoes a week, and Choi handled the press--which is how she met Yeardye.
“We specialized in fabrics and had good relations with the press, but nobody could find the shoes,” Choi said. That’s where Yeardye came in. She saw a shoemaker on par with Manolo Blahnik and knew there had to be room in the market for someone else.
“I approached Jimmy and said, ‘I’ll become a partner and financially back the company, find the factory in Italy, open our own stores and wholesale the collection to other stores,’ ” Yeardye said. “I didn’t realize at the time it was Sandra doing the designs.”
Choo is a shareholder, and his name is over the door, but he isn’t involved in the design or management of Jimmy Choo shoes. He continues to make Jimmy Choo Couture, handmade shoes; the women make Jimmy Choo ready-to-wear.
“Because of my background, I try to put together a shoe with a lot of couture flavor,” Choi said. “Rather than a plain shoe, there is always something going on. We try to create a luxury brand where we can afford to use real crystal. And even though it is ready-to-wear, our factories are always complaining that the shoes have to be finished by hand. I try to keep it young. I don’t think there is any woman on this planet who doesn’t want to be young.”
Yeardye, 30, and Choi 27, are turning out 120 designs a season for 250 outlets--a handful of their own and specialty and department stores. They have boutiques in London, New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas (a mecca these days for luxury shopping) and say they’d like to expand to Miami, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston and Dallas in the next three years.
After that, it’s on to Asia: Hong Kong, Tokyo and “maybe even China, one day,” Choi said.
In the meantime, they are dressing the stars in Hollywood--50 of them for the last Oscar night. “It’s like Christmas for us,” Choi said.
And they provided the footwear for the runway shows of the U.S. designers, Randolph Duke and Carmen Marc Valvo during the just-concluded London Fashion Week. They have very little British competition, which Choi attributes to the logistical difficulties of the shoe trade. “It’s very hard to get the whole package together. It took us ages to get it right--the designs, the factory, the support. If it weren’t for Tamara’s trust and belief and her family backing us up with investment, this never would have happened. There is a lot of talent out there, but you have to have the right marriage,” Choi said.
“Also, fashion is cutting edge here, but there is no money in it. People don’t invest in fashion. In America, it’s an industry,” Yeardye said.
“[Alexander] McQueen is done in Italy, [Vivienne] Westwood shows in America, and [John] Galliano in Paris,” said Choi, referring to England’s highest profile fashion designers. “What does that say?”
Choi and Yeardye work closely together on designs as well as the business and production end. “Sandra is like an architect. She does the structure, the heel, the lines,” Yeardye said. “I am more like an interior designer who comes in to talk color, fabric and detail.”
When the economy is good--or so the fashion lore goes--skirts get shorter and heels get higher, she explained. Women feel more confident. This year, it’s heels, heels, heels. “Choos are on my wavelength,” London businesswoman Sahar Hashemi told the Financial Times special fashion edition. The co-founder of the Coffee Republic chain added, “I love looking small and fragile; it’s a great image for a woman in a tough business.”
Yeardye and Choi walked a couple of blocks from their modest second-floor offices in chic Belgravia over to their Motcomb Street store--Choi in black kid pumps--for a look at their winter line. But, in fact, there is very little on the shelves. The shoes are selling so fast, they can hardly keep them stocked. The sales assistant pulled out a leather-bound book with pictures of all the styles and accompanying lists of women waiting for the shoes.
Several shoppers in the flower-bedecked boutique were from the United States.
“This is a very provocative shoe,” said Jane Cohen of New York, trying on a python-skin pair with four-inch heels. “But I can’t walk from my apartment to dinner.” She rejected them in favor of a $450 pair of lower, black silk shoes with diamond clips.
“It’s fun to find a casual, comfortable little shoe with a little style,” Cohen said. “I have another pair of Jimmy Choos that I wear a lot in Florida. They’re denim, and they dress up.”
Sarah Hough, also from New York, came in wearing running shoes to try on a black mid-calf boot with a three-inch heel.
Are they comfortable?
“I wouldn’t say they are comfortable, but when you buy shoes like this, it isn’t comfort you’re going after,” Hough said.
Yeardye and Choi would disagree. They insist that customers find their Jimmy Choos comfortable as well as sexy. “We keep ordering more to anticipate demand, but it’s never enough,” Yeardye said.
Witness the half-empty shelves.
