In May 1998 Tamara Yeardye attended the wedding of the man she had been dating
when she was wooing Jimmy Choo. Henry Dent-Brocklehurst, the godson of
Camilla Parker Bowles, was married at his home, the 15th-century Sudeley
Castle. Henry was marrying a beautiful Hawaiian model named Lili Maltese and OK!
magazine had given them $1.2 million (then around £500,000) for the rights
to photograph the wedding. After the event, an exhibition about the wedding
was set up in the castle for the ticket-buying public. The carefully posed
pictures of the bride and groom in OK! were somewhat upstaged by the
sight of Liz Hurley’s underpants. She wore a red Versace dress slit so high
up her leg that her sequined leopard-print underwear was clearly visible.
The guests were the usual London party-going set: the Rolling Stones’ Mick
Jagger and his then-wife, the former model Jerry Hall; the actor Hugh Grant;
the interior designer Nicky Haslam; the socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson; the
singers Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Bryan Adams; the writer A. A. Gill,
and a newcomer, a California import whom Henry knew from his days in Los
Angeles, Matthew Mellon.
Tamara had briefly met Matthew earlier at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, but
he had failed to make an impression. This time was different. For one thing,
he jumped into her car as she was driving back to London. It was love at
second sight — at least for him. “I had two hours to close the deal,” he
later said. “I knew that car journey would be the most important trip of my
life.” She said he was “one of the funniest men I’d met in my life. He would
have me on the floor in stitches. I also thought he was one of the most
good-looking men I’d ever seen.”
Matthew, one of the heirs to the Mellon Bank fortune, had already spent the
first of his 13 trust funds by the time he met Tamara. He had lived a
notoriously sordid life in Los Angeles, surrounded by drugs and Heidi
Fleiss’s call girls. Tamara was not put off by his past. “It’s not a big
deal,” she said. “If you live in LA and you haven’t been to rehab, you’re
just not cool.”
Matthew’s early life had veered frequently between the tragic and the comic
but came out heavily weighted on the side of the tragic. He was the
great-great-grandnephew of Andrew W. Mellon, the tycoon who founded Union
Trust Company and was one of the heads of the Mellon Bank. On his mother’s
side he hails from the old American dynasties of the Drexels and Biddles,
but though his mother’s family was more prestigious, the Mellons were more
controlling of the progeny.
Matthew’s toddler years, from 2 to 4, were spent with his two brothers on his
father’s 80-foot yacht, the Caribou, which was usually harboured either in
Maine or in the Caribbean. Aside from being a keen sailor, fisherman and
pianist, Matthew’s father, Karl, was also suffering from bipolar disorder.
In 1983 Karl committed suicide shortly before Matthew graduated from high
school. “No matter how abundant my life has been, nothing has been able to
fill the hole left by my father’s death,” he said.
At the time, Matthew was unaware that he was in line to receive a substantial
inheritance. His mother had kept the knowledge of the 13 trust funds from
him, thinking it would save him from becoming spoiled. It was not until his
21st birthday that Matthew learned the truth about his fortune. On that
birthday his uncle Jay, the head of the Mellon family, threw a party for him
in Pittsburgh, the family seat. He took him into the top-floor boardroom of
Mellon Bank to tell him that he would be getting, that very day, $25 million
(£14 million), just the first of the trust funds to come. “It was a rather
overwhelming figure,” Matthew later said. “My life changed dramatically. I
knew then that I was faced with a whole new set of challenges. I immediately
started subscribing to The Wall Street Journal.”
The driven, vivacious, British Tamara was just what Matthew was looking for.
“He has two rules in life: he says he would never date an actress or a
singer,” Tamara later said. That September he sold his Los Angeles home and
moved to London to be with her.
Tamara’s brother Greg found the couple a home in Belgravia by dropping letters
into every house in the area asking if anyone wanted to sell. Finally he
found them a 2,500-square foot ground floor and basement duplex apartment on
Eaton Place. The Mellons paid for the flat, but Tamara’s father, Tom, took
charge of the negotiations and paid for its renovation and furnishing. Eight
months and £400,000 later — a bit of which went to outbid Damien Hirst on an
early 20th-century bench covered in pink silk — it was ready to make its
debut in the interior-decorating press.
While things were heating up with Matthew and Jimmy Choo, the company, they
were cooling off considerably with Jimmy Choo, the man. In 1998 Tom [who was
Tamara’s backer] urged Jimmy to move from his workshop in Hackney into more
respectable surroundings. Ann [Tamara’s mother] recalls, “He told him it
wouldn’t do to have him in Hackney any more.” Tom told Jimmy, “Your name is
on doors around the world. You have to move.” Jimmy found a townhouse on
Connaught Street in Bayswater, just north of Hyde Park and just west of
Marble Arch. It was a big improvement on the studio in Hackney. It had space
for a workshop in the basement, a showroom for his couture shoes on the
ground floor, and room for his family to live on the floors upstairs.
There was no fanfare surrounding the opening. When Jimmy finally did an
interview, it was in February 1999, some ten months after the couture store
had opened. He explained: “I didn’t have any publicity because I am
superstitious. Last year was the year of the Tiger. This year is the year of
the Rabbit. I’m going to have good publicity this year. The rabbit is soft
and lovely and has special chi. So, it’s a good year for me.” His
feng shui master came to give the store and workshop a clean bill of health
before Jimmy moved in. The master predicted that Jimmy would win Best
Accessory Designer, the prestigious award of the British Fashion Council
(BFC).
The chi must have been strong. Jimmy Choo got his eighth BFC award nomination
— but this time he won. The headlines the following day were all about the
avant-garde Turkish designer Hussein Chalayan, who won Designer of the Year
for the second year running, but the industry chatter was about the feud
between Tamara and Jimmy. Rumours of a rift were beginning to trickle out of
the fashion world. When asked about it in an interview, Jimmy said: “I love
the idea of couture and its emphasis on creation. There’s where I made my
name — in design— and there’s where I’d like to stay. After all, it’s very
important for any big-name designer to have a couture range. I leave the
ready-to-wear to my partner and team.”
But privately, Jimmy was beginning to speak more and more frequently about his
frustrations with Tamara and the Yeardyes. Rightly or wrongly, he felt that
he had been taken advantage of and that his name was being exploited without
his consent. “I think he was sad,” said Anouska Hempel. “He felt betrayed
and let down that he’d allowed his name to be circulated around the world on
good faith. He is a charming little chappie. He’s very old-fashioned. He
trusts people.”
On April 23, 2000, The Mail on Sunday published a feature all
about the two Jimmy Choos, making public for the first time Jimmy’s disquiet
at Tamara and Tom’s moves. It quoted Jimmy as saying: “Anyone can sketch a
shoe.” To which the fashion world responded . . . ho hum. There were far
more important things to worry about — like Tamara’s wedding.
The May 2000 wedding was Tamara’s chance to show the world that she was more
than just an average It-girl. Her Blenheim Palace wedding was cast as
carefully as one of her shoots in Vogue.
The night before the wedding there was a not-so-intimate rehearsal dinner for
170 people in the gardens of Sudeley Castle, where guests enjoyed a buffet
dinner and the performance of a group of ballerinas under a glass marquee
that had been imported from Paris and protected guests from the spring
rains.
The next day was better. There were two couture gowns, one by Valentino for
the main event (for months Tamara had phoned in her measurements every week
to the atelier in Rome) and another, on standby, by the London designer
Maria Grachvogel, who made Tamara’s rehearsal dinner dress; 41 carats of
Harry Winston diamonds; 400 guests, and dozens of doves.
The ceremony was held at a small church near the estate. Tamara had borrowed
racks of Ellie Saab dresses from Marilyn Heston for her friends to wear.
Young boys in morning coats led the guests to their seats, and the Rolling
Stones’ keyboard player, Matthew Clifford, had composed a special
processional march for the event. Although the British made a strong
showing, the crowd was heavily weighted on the Mellon side. The side that
was decidedly less chic.
After the ceremony the guests gathered outside the church, as is traditional,
to cheer the bride and groom. But when they arrived at the top of the church
steps, they were hurried out of the way. “It was all about ‘stay clear of
the doves’,” said one guest about the birds they had arranged to set free
after the event. “The whole thing was just orchestrated for the photo
shoot.”
Things did not improve much at the Blenheim Palace party afterwards. The food
was not the problem. Nor was the décor. The guests were dressed to the
nines. Tatler noted: “There wasn’t a little black dress in sight. Not
one. That’s called fashion history,” although the photos that accompanied
the article proved the point wrong.
But even worse than a cultural faux pas such as friends wearing black dresses
to a wedding, people who barely knew the couple were surprised to find
themselves at the head table. During the speeches, no one thanked the
Yeardyes, despite the fact that Tom had footed the entire bill. Tom had
given the couple a budget that, according to friends, they quickly blew
through.
“He vowed he wouldn’t give her a penny more,” one friend recalled. “But I am
pretty sure he did.” Family friends of the Yeardyes felt that the whole
thing was upsetting to Tom and Ann. “They were made to feel subordinate — it
was all about the Mellons,” said another.
Indeed it was Jay Mellon, Matthew’s uncle, who served as the evening’s master
of ceremonies, not Tom, although he made a touching speech. Friends of
Tamara and Matthew found it equally awkward. Matthew flew a band in from
America called Boogie Knights that was far too loud, making conversation
impossible. A 5ft cake made of profiteroles almost crashed to the ground.
After the meal, people rushed to leave. Outside there was torrential rain,
making a quick exit impossible. Mobile phones did not work (making it hard
to reach chauffeurs), and there was no landline available in the house.
Those who stayed watched fireworks through torrential rain.
The pictures of the wedding that appeared in Tatler and Vogue
made it all look fairytale perfect. Vogue called Tamara the icon of a
new wedding movement — the “modern traditionalists”.
On a more practical note, Tamara later told a journalist: “We had record sales
that week. I would say 90 per cent of the girls [at the wedding] were
wearing Jimmy Choos.”
After their honeymoon at the Amanresorts in Bali, Tamara and Matthew retreated
to the Hamptons for the summer. From there Tamara saw Jimmy Choo get its
best mention on Sex and the City. Running to catch the Staten Island
Ferry, Carrie Bradshaw, the lead character, loses a shoe. “Wait! I lost my
Choo!” she cries out as the boat pulls away from the pier.
Jimmy knew just how Carrie felt. He took the opportunity of Tamara’s absence
from London to boost his own image. With a PR firm of his own guiding him,
he began going to parties, doing interviews, and contributing to small but
high-profile design projects, such as creating special boots for the British
luxury brand Daks, and starting a line of feng shui shoes that had powerful
crystals sewn into the straps. On his annual trip to Malaysia— where, thanks
to Tamara, the shoes were being sold by the department store Isetan — he was
knighted by the Sultan of Pahang.
According to the Yeardyes, Jimmy began to be increasingly difficult when it
came to their business. He was talking so openly, so regularly, about his
dissatisfaction with the partnership that, according to Ann, Tom had to take
steps to protect the Yeardyes’ interests and had his attorney write a
cease-and-desist letter. Jimmy, Ann recalls, responded with a letter from
his lawyer saying Tamara was no longer allowed to speak to the press. He
then began taking advice from the husband of one of his customers who was a
senior executive at a US film company. He was pushing Jimmy to find a
solution to the situation, and the one he favoured meant suing the Yeardyes.
Tom took the film executive to lunch in an attempt to head off a fight. Tom
offered to buy Jimmy out of his half of the company. Jimmy refused to sell.
© Lauren Goldstein Crowe and Sagra Maceira de Rosen, 2009. This is an extract
from The Towering World of Jimmy Choo: a Glamorous Story of Power,
Profits, and the Pursuit of the Perfect Shoe published by Bloomsbury
today (£18.99). To order it for £17.09, inc p&p, call 0845
2712134 or visit timesonline.co.uk/
booksfirst
