• • • •
IN SEPTEMBER 2011, I WAS at Ted Forstmann’s “visionaries” conference in Aspen. This is one of the few places you can run into Queen Noor, Colin Powell, Michael Dell, Martha Stewart, Brian Williams, Tony Blair, and George Lucas before you’re six paces into the room. The entire crowd of about three hundred people is at that level of recognition and accomplishment.
I was chatting with Tory Burch about the fashion industry when Michael Ovitz, best known for founding Creative Artists Agency and changing the way Hollywood operates, came over and began to chat. He was very close to Ted and had been on his board at Gulfstream.
We got together again the next evening, but then I had to leave early to go to China. He said, “When you come back, let’s go to dinner,” and so we did, and eventually one thing led to another.
For much of my career there’s been no man in my life. Between Cedric and Matthew there were no relationships—there was hardly time for a date—and the same was true after Christian. But now it’s such a relief to be with a real grown-up.
After years of being at the very top of the Hollywood power structure, Michael is completely done with the entertainment business, and now he’s finding the same kind of excitement as an investor in the high-tech sector. He’s based in Palo Alto, has a place in L.A. and another in New York, a magnificent art collection, and a boat that he keeps in St. Bart’s, so our orbits overlap in many ways. And we simply have a lot of fun laughing and learning from each other. He’s as knowledgeable about architecture and design as he is about art, and now he’s learned a bit about fashion from me as well.
I truly enjoy being around someone who is so accomplished and whose interests are complementary to mine. I also get on famously with his three kids—Chris, thirty-two; Kimberly, twenty-nine; and Eric, twenty-six—and they treat Minty like a little sister. Michael, too, is great with her. Not long ago she was scheduled to have a sleepover at a friend’s house while I was away, but then she changed her mind and called Michael and asked him to come pick her up. When he got there he asked, “You want me to drop you back home?”
She said, “No. I want to stay at your apartment downtown.”
He said okay. But then he said, “How about we get some dessert?”
She smiled. “Okay, but first I have to change.”
So he took her down to his apartment where she could put on her finery, and then there they were, the two of them at Max Brenner’s chocolate bar in Union Square at nearly midnight, out on the town.
Is he a rescuer?
Thanks, but there’s no need.
Am I out to rescue him?
Hardly. He’s far from drowning.
In Hollywood, Michael was known as a tough cookie, but that’s never been my experience—though some of my friends have joked that having a relationship with Michael Ovitz is like the final exam in the master class in self-actualization, the road test before they give you your license. It’s true—you have to know what you want, who you are, and what you will accept. Michael knows where my boundaries are and where I draw the line.
Of course, with his strong business mind and his long experience in deal making, Michael has been a great sounding board as I put together the financing for my new venture. When one would-be investor was being difficult, I wondered out loud, “What am I going to do with this guy? Should we do what he wants?” Michael’s response was always, “Do what’s best for you and your business, and don’t be afraid to be strong.” So I kicked out the investor and I felt great about it.
Almost every mistake I’ve made in business has come from not trusting myself. But now I know that if something doesn’t work for me, it’s not going to work for the customer. It was often a struggle, but by ultimately making it “work for me,” Jimmy Choo became the most successful private-equity fashion story in the industry—not just in the UK but globally.
• • • •
ANYONE WHO DOES ANYTHING WELL is probably compulsive to some degree, displaying the obsessive behavior otherwise known as “taking pains” and “getting the details right.”
Obviously, this memoir is a by-product of the year I had the time to recover and reflect, and in writing it I’ve done my best to take pains and to get the details right. Then again, there does come a time when the publisher simply says, “Enough! We need the manuscript by Friday.”
I’ve tried hard to make what I’ve written truthful, and I hope that it qualifies as “a good read.” But I’d also love it if businesspeople, especially entrepreneurs, and even more specifically women entrepreneurs, find it useful. Women especially are flooded with clichés and conflicting advice, and it must be terribly confusing for a young person trying to determine early on just how much she should “lean in,” and just how much she’s supposed to “have it all.”
As I’m sure you would anticipate by now, my most fundamental piece of advice to those young women is to follow your instincts. If you have the wrong instincts for what you’re trying to do, that will become evident soon enough, and it may require you to change course, but being blown back and forth by the winds of conflicting opinions will get you nowhere. You have to know where you stand, and that your value as a human being does not depend on anyone else’s assessment, and yet you must always remain open to learning and to growth.
Given all the cultural residues, it’s incredibly difficult for women to understand and to accept their value, and even successful women can and do suffer from “imposter syndrome.” Hoping to compensate for their assumed deficiencies (and perhaps still seeking to “earn Daddy’s love”), they will silently work themselves to death, hoping that someday they will be noticed and rewarded for all their efforts.
But you can’t just work and wait. You also have to speak up.
And there’s absolutely no reason to tolerate bullying and belittling behavior. For years I tolerated abuse because in my early life that kind of behavior had been the norm. Today, I’d bounce the bullies in two seconds, because the first lesson of the school yard is that you have to confront them right away, in the moment. Being honest in the moment allows you to express displeasure at the first sign of transgression, which is when it can be addressed calmly and rationally, without fear of an explosion. When you speak up in the moment, you don’t have to worry about overdoing it, because you’re not expressing pent-up rage. You’re simply stating a fact: “I’m not happy with this. This is not acceptable.”
They say that when we reach our forties our life goals shift, with autonomy becoming the central issue. But at any age, being able to chart your own course rather than just responding to others’ demands is a beautiful thing.
After Jimmy Choo had grown to a certain size, I used to have to sneak out of the office because there was always a line of people saying, “I only need five minutes . . .”
Those demands on my time have resumed as my new brand moves into high gear, but at least now there’s no one in my diary that I don’t like. Moreover, I have the clarity to recognize an intrusion before it happens and the wherewithal to deflect it.
At one time, my alarm systems were constantly overloaded, but now I give myself more space, and I refuse to make back-to-back appointments. Instead, I allow myself a moment or two to breathe, to reflect, to absorb my perceptions and intuitions. The body always knows more about any given situation than what registers in conscious awareness, and with a little practice, we can become more intuitive, then become brave enough to let our intuitions inform our decisions.
As I complete this project now, and as I anticipate the launch of my new brand, I realize just how fortunate I am to be where I am, with new worlds to conquer, a new home to enjoy, and in the meantime, the pleasure of watching my daughter’s transformation into a smart, beautiful, and resourceful young woman. In the mornings when she comes in to kiss me before she’s off to school, it’s the greatest gift. Sometimes she’ll even climb under the cove
rs with me and give me a hug and we’ll have a little chat before we start out the day.
We both adore the vitality and the variety of New York, the fact that we have such great friends, and that there are always great art galleries and fabulous parties to go to when the mood takes our fancy. But parties and especially business entertaining can get to be a bit much, and truth be told, I’d just as soon be home in sweatpants and a T-shirt watching Downton Abbey. That show is my guilty pleasure, and not just because of the costumes and the furnishings or the story lines. It’s the sense of obstinate integrity that is a recurring plot element. Characters are always refusing to benefit from some windfall simply because it wouldn’t be the right thing to do.
In 2012, I bought a place for summer and weekend getaways in Bridgehampton. It’s a simple gambrel house with graying shingles and very English hedges on one acre in the village, just a short bike ride to the beach. It’s Minty’s and it’s mine and it’s our sanctuary. And I paid cash for it. There’s no mortgage, so it feels solid and secure.
Minty loves the Hamptons, and she’s obsessed with horses, so we stable a pony that she rides every day when we’re there. We don’t really go to the beach much since we usually stay at home by the pool. We go out to early dinners—but just very casual blue-jean dinners—we relax, and we watch movies. All her friends from school in Manhattan have family places nearby, so for her it’s the same gang.
I feel truly sorry for my mother that she denied herself the pleasures of this kind of relationship. But just because I missed out on this kind of closeness as a daughter doesn’t mean I can’t treasure it now that I’m the mother.
I really don’t hear much from my mother or my brothers these days, though I have heard that Gregory is in real estate, once again, in Los Angeles. But happily, I’ve remained close to the Mellons. Uncle Jay lives around the corner from us and every now and then we have lunch at the Four Seasons. Minty’s Mellon grandmother lives in Palm Beach, and occasionally we all have Thanksgiving dinner together. Matthew lives at the Pierre, just a few blocks south of me, so Minty has ready access to both her parents, and I really admire his effort to stay clean and sober, which is so much harder to do when you’re bipolar. He keeps fighting and coming back, which makes him much braver than his father.
• • • •
AS FOR THE REST OF our cast of characters:
Two colleagues from the very beginning have become like family to me, and their friendship is one of my greatest benefits from all those years at Jimmy Choo. Hannah Colman, who started selling for us at seventeen and went on to become one of our senior executives, holds a place in my heart as if she truly were my little sister. She always seemed to love the customers, and I know they still love her.
My other “sister” is Anna Conti, and I feel just as close to her brother Massimo. When Labelux bought the company, Anna set up a new agency called Matti, and then they had to renegotiate terms. Labelux handed her a list of other people in the business she would not be allowed to work with. My name was at the top of the list.
Harvey Weinstein and I are still friends, though perhaps not as close as we once were. In 2011, he sold his shares in Halston for fifty cents on the dollar, this after bringing in Sarah Jessica Parker for a stint as creative director. But there were already too many different people on board with too many different agendas and opinions. I left my shares in, and I noticed recently that they were opening a new store on Madison Avenue and still pushing Halston Heritage. There may be hope still, but profit or loss, the lesson for me is to never go through with a deal based on ego.
Martin Freeman is still on hand to help me process the “facts and feelings” I encounter in my life. As comrade veterans of the Battle of Jersey, we will sometimes go back over the transcripts of the trial, Martin doing the various voices as he reads aloud, the two of us trying to make sense of that intensely bizarre episode.
Josh Schulman is now president of Bergdorf Goodman, and clearly retail is the work he was born to do. At the age of eleven, or so I’ve been told, he used to walk through department stores and reorganize their displays. Bergdorf is owned by Neiman Marcus, which is owned by TPG, one of the original bidders for Jimmy Choo.
Robert serves on various boards and, along with Jim Sharp, invested in Bremont, a luxury watch brand. He also went back to Phoenix to acquire a lower-end British shoe brand called L.K.Bennett. I saw him not long ago at one of the BAFTA dinners we’d once sponsored, an event that continues to be one of the most sought-after invitations in London. Robert seemed so proud of himself for being there, as if he’d forgotten that we had once owned that dinner and he’d foolishly canceled it. The evening has been sponsored by Chanel for years.
Lyndon Lea had huge successes flipping companies like Weetabix and Kettle Chips, but his interest in frozen foods led to a certain degree of egg on the face. He was a huge shareholder in Findus, the Swedish company pilloried for selling horse meat as beef.
At last report, Jimmy Choo was still on Connaught Street and still making shoes.
Sandra Choi is still creative director of the company that bears her uncle’s name, and she’s still my biggest disappoinment. Every time she sees me she breaks down and cries. At Hannah Colman’s wedding in Milan she came up to me in tears and I just looked at her and said, “Well, it didn’t end well, but you know why.” That must have hurt, because she’s big enough to at least acknowledge her role in betraying me. But that doesn’t mean that I have to provide forgiveness.
As for the company itself, it seems they’ve followed a rather Orwellian path in trying to rewrite history. I ran into some old colleagues not long ago who told me to check out the Jimmy Choo Web site. They were horrified to report that the company history provided there does not mention my name even once. I’d been written out of the script, replaced by Sandra Choi in the creation myth they choose to offer.
As for me, enjoying my new life as much as I am, we have to remember that even Eden had its serpent. Directly in front of my house in the Hamptons there are thirteen acres of land, which were supposed to be conserved and set aside for strictly “agricultural purposes.”
When I was first interested in buying the place, I asked the Realtor, “Can you just make sure what’s going to happen to that land?” It had just been sold to a new owner, so I was curious. “I don’t want to buy the house if someone’s going to put up a big fence or block my view or something.”
So she called the new owner’s lawyer and he assured her, “No, no. I’ve spoken to the landscape architect and they’re going to respect the land and put in an apple orchard.”
This sounded great, so I bought the house. But a while later I got a call from the broker, who said, “Oh my God, Tamara, the guy who bought the reserve—he’s going to build an eight-thousand-square-foot stable. It’s going to be huge, and he’s going to be putting it right in front of your house. There’ll be a monster fence, and horse trailers coming in and out . . . and I’m so sorry.”
She gasped for air, and then to top it all off she said, “You must know this guy. He’s going around saying he owned Jimmy Choo.”
As it turned out, it was Robert Darwent, the bean-counting partner from Lion Capital that Lyndon sent in every month to check the numbers.
Our property lines are adjacent—he looks at my house, and I look at his.
It’s the perfect irony, of course. But after everything I’d been through, and all the lessons I’d learned, you can rest assured there will be no “going along just to get along.” The plot continues, but any issues along our shared boundary will be dealt with openly and with resolve.
If I have a bit of equanimity now, and if I’m better at standing my ground, it’s only because I fought my way through the rites of passage until the monsters that tormented me were slain. It may have seemed that now and then I needed a rescuer, but over time, I learned to rescue myself.
My father, Tom Yeardye
, at his desk at the Vidal Sassoon offices in the early eighties. We relocated to California for my father to run the business from the United States.
My mother, father, and I posed in the garden behind our Tudor cottage in Wingfield, Berkshire, where I grew up.
My father and me as a young child.
A friend and me at summer camp on Catalina Island in the seventies.
Here I am sneaking out of the basement boiler room of the chalet at the Institut Alpin Videmanette, in Rougemont, Switzerland, in 1984. Madame Yersin, the headmistress, moved me to her chalet after too many late nights at the neighboring boys’ school.
This is the gorgeous library at Blenheim where our wedding dinner was held with catering by Admirable Crichton, flowers by Kenneth Turner, and a five-foot-tall cake made of profiteroles.
Photograph by Geoffrey Shakerley
After six months of dating, Matthew and I became engaged. We were married at Blenheim Palace, the home of the dukes of Marlborough and the birthplace of Winston Churchill.
Photograph by Geoffrey Shakerley
My mother and father celebrating at my wedding.
Matthew posing for a picture at the wedding reception with our friends Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley.
Matthew holding Minty on his shoulders during our trip to Lyford Cay, Bahamas, in 2004.
Matthew and me at a boar shoot on a friend’s estate in Germany around 1999.
Minty and me in Ibiza in 2003. This was the summer that Matthew disappeared for three days after clubbing all night. It was the last straw in our marriage.
In My Shoes: A Memoir Page 24