Anyone Who's Anyone

by George Wayne

  GW:

  That’s what makes you such a downer. What’s your favorite quote from the Bible?

  JC:

  I don’t read the Bible.

  GW:

  You’ve never read a chapter of the Bible?

  JC:

  I don’t read the Bible; I’m not a religious person. I’m a Buddhist, a hovering Buddhist. I don’t read the Bible, but I feel that religion is responsible for all the ills in the world.

  TAMARA MELLON

  JANUARY 2017

  Tamara Mellon is my epitome of the driven, überposh, intellectually advanced, well-bred English woman. The fact that she engineered a legendary fashion brand is the icing on the cake . . . well, maybe.

  Tamara Mellon cofounded Jimmy Choo, the luxe shoe company in 1996, and without question the success of that fashion accessory cements her claim to being one of the most dynamic and influential fashion personalities of the last fifty years.

  She departed Jimmy Choo in 2011 in a huff, and the trials and the tribulations that have ensued are now the stuff of legend. The vicious Sturm und Drang that unfolded after divesting her from that fashion accessory brand continues well into 2017. The mudslinging and the lawsuits, the back and forth recriminations with her former partners and investors at Jimmy Choo are beyond travesty. We haven’t seen such madness since the days of the blitzkrieg.

  The continued drama would have devastated mere mortals. But Tamara Mellon is no mere mortal. She has fought off the sharks, her detractors, whose only goal, it seems, is to continue to spur her demise. She sought to reinvent herself and create a new fashion focus, TMB [Tamara Mellon Brand], in 2013, only to be forced into bankruptcy in 2016 by the continuous subterfuge and alleged nefarious tactics of her former partners, now diabolical enemies.

  “After parting ways, I worked tirelessly to build a groundbreaking new brand. But the inappropriate actions of my former company threw a wrench in our ability to move forward. The vicious, irresponsible, and soulless liars and fraudsters” are still chomping at her heels.

  But moving forward is exactly what Tamara Mellon continues to do. Cleopatra would have been proud. . . .

  GW:

  First came Manolo Blahnik; then came Tamara Mellon for Jimmy Choo. Then there was a snafu and Christian Louboutin swooped in and stepped in your shoes, for want of better words, and stole your thunder. Now you are back with a major comeback all under your name Tamara Mellon Brand. Give us the backstory of what led to all this? What led to that chasm with Jimmy Choo?

  TM:

  I sold the brand in 2011 and I think it was very hard for me to come to grips with selling the majority of my business and then realizing that I had suddenly become a guest in my own house, so I had to get out. I saw things being done to the product that I would never have done myself. For them it was just about the profit margins and not the long-term viability of the business. And as a founder I cared about different things, so for me it was very hard to stand by and just let that happen. So I really didn’t before that have any experience with investors and the like. And by the time I came to realize what this was all going to be, it was too late. They were already too far in. And you were right, back in the beginning there was really only one brand and that was Manolo Blahnik. And as you probably do know, I started off as a glossy magazine editor.

  GW:

  How did the idea of creating Jimmy Choo dawn on you?

  TM:

  In those days, of the early nineties and as an editor, I just got bored shooting the same brand [Manolo Blahnik]. And we would go down to Jimmy’s studio on the East End of London. We would get him to make some shoes for us. I would say to him, for instance, “Hey, Jimmy I need a pair of Grecian sandals and I want it flat with lattice leather straps,” and he would make them. I wasn’t the only editor who would do this. And of course, we would photograph the shoes and give him credit in Vogue. And then people started asking where they could get the shoes. And there was nowhere to actually get them! So naturally I thought, Wow, what a great platform to start a business. And that is how it all began in 1996. So I went to Jimmy and I said, “Let’s build a business.”

  GW:

  Wow! What balls.

  TM:

  I mean, literally where the shop was located, basically this disused garage in the East End of London that was dangerous. We would go there and park our cars behind gates that had to be padlocked. That is how dangerous it was. And that is where he would be making these shoes. And so I said, “Jimmy you help design the collection and I will raise the money and open the stores and find the factories. I will do the whole operation.” I actually borrowed money from my father. I borrowed one hundred and fifty thousand dollars from my dad, because nobody would put money in because I had no track record and neither did Jimmy. And then I flew to Italy and found factories.

  GW:

  Really, seriously, when I saw having balls, this was so bold and audacious, all the things you are telling me!

  TM:

  I don’t know how I did it. When I think back, and what I did, if I had really thought about what I was doing I would probably have been scared to do it. So I went to Italy with the book, I had a listing of factories, and just basically knocked on doors asking, Can you make these shoes? And then we opened the first store, the size of a coffee table, on Jermyn Street. And it became so popular. And then it sort of evolved to my designing the shoes and Jimmy making them. That was really his forte. Jimmy had that technical skill of making the shoes but he didn’t have the creative flair to design the collection.

  GW:

  And what is the shoe design process all about for Tamara Mellon?

  TM:

  Though I am not the genius sketcher, say of Manolo [Blahnik], I work differently. I work from images and mood boards and vintage shopping. I have it in my head and come up with the ideas via images. And so then 1997 was a benchmark year for the brand. It was the breakout collection when we did the shoes with the feathers on them, and Carrie Bradshaw [Sarah Jessica Parker] went on to wail in Sex and the City, “I lost my Choo! I lost my Choo!” And I remember when we had a sale that year, there was a line around the block. The women were going crazy, pushing and screaming to get in.

  GW:

  And who was the first major brick-and-mortar to carry the brand in the United States?

  TM:

  It was Saks Fifth Avenue.

  GW:

  Then business boomed and then what?

  TM:

  In 2001, Jimmy decided to sell his shares and that is how private equity got into my business. Jimmy sold his shares to private equity and none of them ever put money into the business. All they did was buy shares. The only way we grew the business was from what we generated from cash flow. It was a constant musical chairs of private equity companies coming into the business, and therein lay my frustration. It was exhausting. And so in 2011 when Lever Luxe bought the business I sold my equity. It was all just more of the same. So I made some money and sold my shares.

  GW:

  What do you think of the brand Jimmy Choo today?

  TM:

  I don’t know! I don’t even look at it. And that is why I wrote a book [In My Shoes], I closed that chapter and it was quite cathartic.

  GW:

  Who is the Tamara Mellon woman?

  TM:

  She definitely has a seventies side to her, considering it is my favorite decade. But she is also an independent, free-spirited woman. She is a woman in charge of her own life. She is, of course, fashionable and loves luxury. She is really glamorous but not over-made or overdone. She is natural. She epitomizes natural glamor.

  GW:

  And who were your fashion icons as a teenager?

  TM:

  Halston, Gucci, and Fiorucci . . .

  GW:

  Just ask the girls of Sister Sledge!

  TM:

  I loved Ted Lapidus, Elsa Peretti, too.

  GW:

  And I hear you also went to finishin
g school in Switzerland. The very same finishing school that Princess Diana attended.

  TM:

  Yes. It was a girl’s finishing school in Switzerland that Diana attended a few years before I did. It was just us sixty girls on the outskirts of Gstaad, where Le Rosey was. And it was in a little village called Route Mont. The school was called Vida Minette Institute Alpine. It was so old-fashioned. We basically learnt how to get in and out of sports cars and how to set a table and how to entertain. We learnt French. It was basically learning how to cook, ski, and speak French! Unbelievable, right?

  GW:

  And then, of course, your crazy marriage to Matthew Mellon. . . . Why did you leave him? Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll? You had to have known that before you married him! That was a disaster.

  TM:

  I know, but I have a beautiful daughter that was worth it.

  GW:

  But who names their daughter Araminthe?

  TM:

  Call her “Minty.” Araminthe is actually a very old English name and you find Araminthe around Oxfordshire, and we got married at Blenheim Palace so it seemed right. And I just love the name Minty Mellon.

  GW:

  How did you meet crazy Matthew Mellon?

  TM:

  We met through mutual friends and when I met Matthew he was sober. I had been sober for twenty years and he had been sober for three years when I met him. So I thought he was going to stay sober. I did, and he didn’t, and that was the breakdown of our marriage. He never had anything to do with the business.

  GW:

  For a while there, what I call “Fugly” shoes were suddenly the norm. Those hideous platform shoes, you know like the grotesque shoes that Sofía Vergara likes to wear. You know what I mean.

  TM:

  Yes, I know, we go through strange cycles. It got to the point where I couldn’t bear to see another crazy high platform shoe and the way women were wearing them. I think we are definitely out of that cycle now.

  GW:

  Tell that to Sofía Vergara!

  TM:

  It’s swung now to a much lower heel and so the timing could not be more perfect for Tamara Mellon Brand.

  GW:

  Manolo or Louboutin? Who is more genius and why?

  TM:

  You know, the market was so different than when we started Jimmy Choo. Back then, there was no one, there was only Manolo. Today the market is flooded with a lot of talented people. I think Aquazzura is really talented and Gianvito Rossi is really talented. He is the son of Sergio Rossi.

  GW:

  What about Chloe Gosselin? She is a major emerging new talent. Dare I say that she could be “the next Tamara Mellon”?

  TM:

  I think she is a great talent. I don’t know her personally at all. We have never met. But as I said, the market is flooded with a lot of talented people these days.

  GW:

  Before we go, tell us about your new boyfriend.

  TM:

  It’s not really new. It’s been four years already.

  GW:

  Yet how is it that we never see any paparazzi shots of Mike Ovitz and Tamara Mellon anywhere! It’s as if this is the most reclusive couple in America. Even worse than David Bowie and Iman—who we never, ever see in public together. You guys are almost on that level. We never see or hear of Mike Ovitz and Tamara Mellon appearing or being seen anywhere. Not even in Cannes at Elton John’s AIDS Foundation charity gala on whose board you also sit.

  TM:

  We didn’t go to Cannes this year. And I guess “the paps” are not around any of the places that we go.

  GW:

  How do you both keep this relationship so quiet?

  TM:

  I guess, you know, ahhmm . . . I guess, we sort of, you know . . . I guess they are just not around where we are. We do dinners and we do art auctions. We just go about our lives pretty much like any other couple, really.

  GW:

  What is he like, Mike Ovitz? GW needs to meet Mike Ovitz. He needs a Talent Manager guru.

  TM:

  But he is no longer in the Hollywood business anymore. He left that a long time ago. He’s done with that. He is now involved in the tech world making investments in tech-based startups.

  GW:

  So he is not a recluse?

  TM:

  He is not a recluse at all.

  GW:

  Is it the best relationship you have ever had?

  TM:

  It is the best relationship I have ever had. I love being with a really smart man. He is incredibly intelligent, and when I look at all the things he does today I am just amazed. He got into the tech business way back in the early nineties, way before anyone else did. He realized this was the future. He has always been so far ahead of anyone in everything he does. And he has one of the most amazing art collections in the world.

  GW:

  Mike Ovitz ought to know that he is lucky to have a cool chick like you in his life, Tamara Mellon. And GW thanks you!

  RÉGINE

  SEPTEMBER 1996

  Régine Choukroun was the original Queen of the Night. Before there was Elaine—for sure before there was Susanne Bartsch—there was the one and only Régine, who all her life was always the first to claim that it was she who invented the notion of the discotheque.

  Even if that is not true, at one time she actually did own nineteen nightclubs across the chicest cities and ports on the globe. When I interviewed Régine in 1996, she was in the midst of writing her memoirs. We met of course over a jeroboam of Taittinger champagne, at the Park Avenue Manhattan outpost of her eponymous disco, Regine [sic].

  GW:

  How was your summer in Saint-Tropez, Queen Régine?

  R:

  I am finishing writing my book about the clubs. It will be a very serious book, but, of course, we will talk about the people who came to these clubs. It will be out next year.

  GW:

  Queen Régine, what happened when you and your son, Lionel Rotcage, were arrested on an American Airlines flight after he lit a cigarette?

  R:

  We were in business class, and let me tell you, for seven years I traveled with American Airlines. So I am known. I’m a VIP. They bring me to the plane. They make a lot of “chichi.”

  GW:

  But then if you dare to express your feelings, they [flight attendants] think you are threatening them.

  R:

  Exactly! Now, my son has a little girl, and she wanted to use the toilet, so he stood up with his daughter and took her. Now he’s in the smoking section. And he decided to have a cigarette. One second after, a steward rapped him on the shoulder and said, “Kill that!” Lionel told him he was just waiting for his daughter in the toilet. But he runs back and gets the purser, a very aggressive woman. So he put out the cigarette and gave it to her. I think she took it badly. And she said, “The captain says if you light another cigarette he will land the plane.” Lionel told her he understood and she should stop threatening him. She left, goes to the captain. He comes back and says, “You’ve just threatened my crew.” My son told him it was the reverse. The captain said he didn’t want to hear it and he was going to land the plane. He was hysterical. It was a nightmare. They said they were landing in Boston to refuel. They were lying. They put us in jail.

  GW:

  They put Régine in a filthy prison cell?!

  R:

  Exactly. We were fingerprinted. They took pictures like we were criminals.

  GW:

  Tell me a little about Régine Choukroun’s life?

  R:

  I was born in Belgium and I grew up in Paris. And I decided very early to become somebody very famous. You know, I invented the discotheque. I invented the colored lighting for the disco. I made the twist very famous.

  GW:

  What was your first club?

  R:

  Chez Régine in 1957. In 1962, I opened New Jimmy’s. In 1973, I opened in Brazil; in �
��76, New York. Then nineteen clubs on three continents.

  GW:

  How many clubs are still open?

  R:

  Six. I’m also a singer, an actress.

  GW:

  And a drama queen who still loves the nightlife.

  R:

  I still love to dance until six in the morning.

  GW:

  Did you really teach the Duke of Windsor how to do the twist?

  R:

  Yes. One night I received a call from the personal secretary of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. One hour later they arrived at the café. And that was the beginning of a very, very strong friendship.

  GW:

  Who was one of the first celebrities you ever met?

  R:

  [Porfirio] Rubirosa.

  GW:

  Did you ever see that legendary “thing”?