Given the nature of my business, it didn’t make any difference whether I worked from London or from Manhattan. Then again, relocating to a different city, in a different country, would be incredibly complicated, and it wouldn’t happen overnight.
Back in London, I went to dinner with Josh at Cipriani and I said to him, “How do you feel about moving the operations to Manhattan?”
Josh was from the city originally, and he was intrigued by the idea of coming back himself. He said, “I think it’s a great idea.”
But then he had a conversation with TowerBrook, after which he did a 180-degree turn.
I think TowerBrook objected for the usual reasons: They were afraid of losing control. The most they could abide was my own personal relocation, but they insisted that it not affect EBITDA, that Holy Grail of private-equity exit opportunities.
What they failed to take into account, of course, was that I was already flying across the Atlantic every few weeks and I was burned out. When you go back and forth through so many time zones so often, you’re in a permanent condition of jet lag because you’re never in one place long enough to fully recover. You’re lost in this dopey netherworld, a state in which I realize I’ve probably spent the greater portion of my adult life.
So I stayed in London for the time being, and that summer I rented Tom Cruise’s old house in Beverly Hills. It was a lovely place, English Tudor style on three or four acres off Sunset, with a long winding drive. Christian moved in for the month of August, and things were looking up. He had a new series about to launch, a secret agent thing with a Bourne Identity twist called My Own Worst Enemy. I was even contacted out of the blue by the luxury goods holding company Labelux, offering £350 million pounds for Jimmy Choo.
At Halston, however, things continued along their dismal path. Just in time for the kickoff of our second season in August, Marco resigned. We still had to present the collection, so I called Charlotte and asked her to come help style the show. She and I flew to New York, and we didn’t do a full fashion show but rather a presentation at the Museum of Modern Art that managed to salvage things, at least for a while. Even Emmanuelle Alt from French Vogue picked up on the look we’d created.
Back in London again, I was at a charity event, having dinner with Lord Jonathan Marland, a major shareholder in Hunter, the company that makes the famous Wellington boot. I said, “You know we should do a collaboration. We’ll infuse your Wellies with the DNA of Jimmy Choo.”
I’d seen a stylist at the Oscars the year before wearing Wellies with a denim miniskirt, and I thought it was a great look. Not long after, Kate Moss showed up in Wellies at the Glastonbury Festival, so the boots were definitely coming off the farm and out of the garden and onto the streets.
Eventually we worked out the details and were able to take the traditional Wellie, the green rubber boot, put a faux crocodile print on it, and schedule it for sale in January 2009.
At the end of the summer Josh and I went to Paris to open a new location on rue Saint-Honoré, then we moved Milan to a better location. We were still opening stores in North America, but now with forty locations, we were pretty maxed out. Still, we anticipated sales of over $200 million and EBITDA of $44 million.
Then came September 14, 2008. Lehman Brothers collapsed, the world economy crashed, and the luxury goods business dropped off a cliff. People just stopped buying. It got so bad that even the customers who were spending money asked for plain brown shopping bags so they wouldn’t be seen walking down the street festooned with a luxury logo. Business fell by 30 percent.
TowerBrook saw the same kind of drop-off in all their businesses, so it wasn’t as if they could flog us in particular. But they had saddled Jimmy Choo with £80 million in debt. The covenant we’d signed obligated us to pay a million a month, so the most important thing was to maintain a highly reliable, steady cash flow.
Not too surprisingly, Labelux stopped calling, though I think they were simply hoping to wait out the economic storm and pick us up at a much lower price than the £350 million they’d initially proposed.
Remarkably, I think the crisis drove a need for quality in the luxury marketplace. Customers were looking all the more for great brands they could rely on and trust. The market was now for investment pieces rather than whimsical purchases.
Eight years earlier it had been the presidential daughters who wore Jimmy Choo to their father’s inauguration. In January 2009, it was First Lady Michelle Obama who attended the swearing-in ceremony in patent leather Jimmy Choo pumps.
Shortly thereafter, the Jimmy Choo Wellie hit the stores, and even though they sold for £250 per pair, the line did fantastically well for us. The boost to the bottom line was a huge factor in seeing us through the economic downturn, and it was a turning point for Hunter, too.
Not long after, H&M approached us with an even bolder idea. H&M is the Swedish retailer with two thousand stores selling clothing at a very, very low price point. They wanted to do a collaboration, and with the new mood of austerity—if not global depression—the timing could not have been better. We could broaden our audience while also doing something that was feel-good and fun. But they wanted us to do not just shoes but an entire line of clothing, which I also thought was brilliant. Jan Nord and Jorgen Anderson, their collaborations people, said, “We’d like you to do a full look—all the way to menswear.”
Josh was reluctant, but I loved the challenge of designing for the whole woman, as well as her husband or boyfriend. So I pushed. Ultimately, it would show that collaborations could not only garner attention but also, through the miracle of licensing, drive profits that aren’t accompanied by any increase in cost to us.
I’d just gone on an inspiration trip to Miami with Alvaro, our bag designer, and I’d been absorbing all the bright colors and the art deco design, buying from thrift shops like a madwoman. So it was a very serendipitous thing that I’d just put this rail of clothes together with sequined dresses from the fifties, fringed suede from the seventies, and cardigans from God knows when. I had Charlotte come over and we picked the favorite shoes and bags and we styled the collection with the clothes, and then we presented that to H&M.
We were reimagining these shoes, bags, and dresses from an earlier era, updated to suit the Jimmy Choo woman. Again, H&M would do all the manufacturing and invest the money on the advertising, and we’d simply take a percentage while benefiting from an avalanche of favorable press.
Not long after we set this in motion, Nordstrom gave us the award for Brand Partner of the Year, and Josh went to Seattle to collect it. As he was going through the store, he came upon some industry people trying on UGGs, and he called me up and said, “What do you think about a collaboration with UGG? Would it hurt our image?”
This one was a little risky, because UGG had become very mass. Then again, they have the virtue of crossing all the barriers. Every woman from every income bracket, provided she has a closet and a charge card, has a pair of UGGs, so I put them in the category of guilty pleasures. I decided this could be really fun.
We began thinking about how we would carry through, and then for whatever reason Sandra arbitrarily decided to do her own designs and send in the sketches without really going over them with me.
Next thing you know, Josh called me in a panic and said, “You have to come in and fix this.” The UGG executives hated what they’d seen.
So I did a set of designs that more effectively captured the Jimmy Choo DNA and sent in the new sketches. Everybody was happy.
To launch the collection, we hired photographer Inez van Lamsweerde to capture Amber Valletta on a motorbike wearing her Jimmy Choo UGGs with cutoff jeans and a vintage leather jacket. Our sales went through the roof that quarter, and £4 million dropped to our bottom line.
The Oscars were by now a regular part of our routine, and we were so well established in Hollywood that we didn’t have to push. Managers and sty
lists would simply come to our hotel suite and pick their shoes. But we’d always done other celebrity gifting throughout the year. I would sit down and say, “Send this to that person,” but as the business got bigger, we needed someone to track what the women we wanted associated with our look were up to, and that’s when I brought on Amanda Kyme to help us.
We had a list of targeted actresses, and we would try to match the style of the product to the style of the actresses. Our thought was that if they really liked what they received, they were far more likely to talk about it: who’s having a baby, who’s doing which movie, who’s going off to India, what works best with whose personal style. The same concept applied to gifting fashion editors before they went to the shows, trying to ensure that they’d be photographed carrying our latest bag.
But it was not just the marketing of fashion, but fashion itself that was changing. Shoes were no longer just what you bought to compliment the dress; they became a sexy centerpiece of the look. Then again, it was no longer just Manolo Blahnik competing with us in luxury shoes. Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, and Gucci had caught on. Chanel was repositioning its shoes for the younger woman. Pierre had left Hermès to start his own line, and Diego Della Valle of Tod’s had revived the Roger Vivier brand, to be designed by Bruno Frisoni.
Christian Louboutin was the most powerful of these competitors. He had a dozen or so boutiques, all over the world, including space in Harvey Nichols, which had once been all ours.
Department stores like Saks and Bloomingdale’s were now devoting entire floors to shoes, and Brown’s in London opened an entirely separate store for footwear. More affordable brands like Nine West and Piperlime were also trying to make their presence felt with shoes that were sexy and fun.
Our US business now consisted of twenty-two stores plus the wholesale operation. Brian Henke from Prada was brought in as president of the North American subsidiary. Josh also hired Lisa Bonfante from Chanel to oversee merchandise planning. Buying would now be organized by region. Each of the regional heads would come to Milan every year to see the new collection.
At Halston, we shot a music video of the spring/summer collection to send out to all of the editors, which was actually rather pioneering. We filmed on an outside lot at Pinewood Studios in London, and with winter coming on, the models were all turning blue. I raced home and collected every fur coat I had and brought them in for the girls. I let them use my apartment, I paid for extra models—I did all I could.
• • • •
THEN RIGHT AROUND VALENTINE’S DAY, my friend and financial adviser Adrian Harris called to give me the grim news that I had just about enough cash to live on for another six weeks.
Before the financial crisis I’d put almost all my available cash into hedge funds, which were now frozen because the funds had put up firewalls to keep investors from withdrawing their money. The £4 million I’d cashed out during the TowerBrook deal was still frozen because of legal disputes with my mother. I was already paying hefty lawyers’ bills, and I was expecting those to skyrocket as the showdown approached. I’d just bought the apartment in New York, I was still paying rent in London, and in addition I had moving expenses, plus maintenance expenses on the new place.
I wasn’t insolvent, just illiquid, but still, I felt very exposed and uncomfortable with the state of my finances.
What made it all the more galling was that the agent of so much of my misery was the person who had always seemed to relish making me miserable: my mother. Without her narcissistic scheming, I would have had plenty of cash to weather any storm.
I stepped out of my home office feeling dazed, only to find Christian and Minty having a shouting match through her bedroom door.
I think my daughter had been internalizing all the stress around her because she couldn’t sleep, and she wanted to come out and be with me, but Christian was camped outside her room, insisting that she get back in bed.
Christian had very traditional views and had set himself up as something of an authority on child rearing, having been instructed on the virtues of “tough love” by the South Carolina girlfriend from his entourage back in L.A. She considered herself an expert because she’d done some babysitting in high school. I don’t think his mood was improved by the fact that My Own Worst Enemy, his secret agent show, had been canceled in December after nine episodes.
I thought Minty needed cuddling, not isolation, but Christian told me I was being too lenient. I told him to back off and that I had much bigger issues at the moment. That’s when I told him what I’d just heard about my finances, which led to a huge fight that I truly didn’t need. What I needed was someone to hold me and tell me that it was going to be okay.
The upshot of all this was Christian’s announcement that he had to be on his own. His declaration of independence did not, however, stop him from using my car and driver to get to the airport to fly back to L.A.
This was one of the worst moments in my life, and this was the moment Christian chose to walk out on me. I know he resented the long hours I put in at Jimmy Choo, but given the guilt already surrounding the enterprise, you just don’t criticize a single mom’s mothering. Ultimately, he simply never understood my life, and I suppose I never understood his. But I think the only way it ever works with an actor is to be his nanny.
To make matters worse, the ugly letters from my mother’s lawyers did not abate just because the other crises in my life were piling up. In fact, the letters were becoming increasingly vile, with more and more intense bullying and threats. “You’ll be on the stand for five days,” her lawyer wrote. “Don’t think this will be easy.”
Given the circus my life had become, it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other and keep plodding on. For months I would wake up in the middle of the night and have to change my pajamas because they were soaked with sweat. I was in a very dark and dangerous place, and I’m sure the only thing that saved me was Minty. I was actually kneeling by my bed to pray each night . . . and I’m an atheist.
But at least I had enough sense to reach out for help. For the past couple of years I’d been seeing a therapist named Martin Freeman, who specializes in addictive behaviors. Matthew and I had gone to him back when we were first married. Now I began talking to Martin every day. When we met face-to-face I could see him really taking on all that I was going through, so much so that I worried that I would cause him to have an empathic panic attack. But my sessions with Martin helped me enormously to process and to sort and to gain perspective.
I kept going to work, and I attended all the meetings, and I kept coming up with creative ideas in the design process, and this is where the mask I’d developed so early in life served me well. No one knew just how vulnerable I was—or how much I was dying inside.
Before the six weeks were up I took an advance on the rest of that year’s salary, borrowing £100,000 from the company to stay afloat.
I also went to see Richard Pegum, very successful in hedge funds, for a bit of financial advice. He reminded me that I was accruing interest on the millions I’d reinvested in Jimmy Choo and that all that interest was simply rolling over. I should be able to access that, he said.
So I swallowed my pride and I went in and asked Ramez for a loan based on some of my accrued interest. He said no. He said he didn’t want Robert to know.
I went back to Richard, who told me to go back to Ramez. “He has to do it. You’re his partner. He needs your head in the game. It’s the logical thing to do.”
So I tried again. With the lawsuit coming up, as well as the move, and not knowing how long the hedge funds would be frozen or how long until TowerBrook made their exit, I asked for £3 million.
Ramez said, “Okay. We’ll loan it to you at 20 percent.”
My face must have drained of all color, and he must have noticed, because he then tried to laugh off the absurdity of the interest rate.
“
My money is expensive,” he said.
But he knew full well how much my shares were worth, which was a huge multiple of what I was asking for.
“I’ve got to justify it to my investors,” he told me.
Eventually, we negotiated the rate down to 13.2 percent. We set up a credit line so there would be no interest on any money until I took it out, but still I would be paying $50,000 a month in finance charges. Bottom line: I was loaning the company money at 11 percent and borrowing it back for 13.2.
In the midst of all this, my “glamorous” life representing Jimmy Choo had to go on, which included attending the Oscars. I was in L.A., hosting a lunch at Cecconi’s with Valentino and Elton and a bunch of actresses when a FedEx package arrived containing affidavits from Daniel and Gregory. Just when I thought the whole thing couldn’t go any lower, my two brothers were basically selling me down the river to please my mother.
My brothers were being led, but there was also a kind of willful naïveté, or wishful—even magical—thinking. As in, “Dad always said everything should be split evenly, so we should get half of whatever Tamara has.” But the 64,000 shares at issue had not just “turned up” in my trust. I had put millions at risk to earn those shares, and I’d also signed on to work like a dog. Of course they shouldn’t get half of that. They’d already got their half.
Everything they were saying was such gibberish. I kept thinking, all they have to do is explain to my mother how it really works. But no one ever did.
We even sent a memorandum of the Lion deal to Joshua Rubenstein, my mother’s lawyer in New York, and he acknowledged that I was right, that my cash, plus the shares attached and stapled to the bond, equaled what my mother cashed out, so the split was fifty-fifty, just as it should have been. But then he changed his story.
In My Shoes: A Memoir Page 18