The History of the Jimmy Choo Brand: From a Dusty Atelier to the Top of the Pedestal
Jimmy Choo Young Kit was born in 1948 in Penang, Malaysia. The son of a shoemaker for shoes, Chu was immersed in the world of shoemaking from an early age. His father wanted him to follow in his footsteps, and by the age of 11, Chu had made his first pair of shoes. The history of the brand Jimmy Choo (read as Jimmy Choo) comes, like its founder, from Malaysia.
Family craft
"When I first started out, my father wouldn't let me make shoes," the designer recalls. Instead, he said: "Sit and watch, sit and watch." "For a year and a month, I watched my father work and didn't work."
After learning about the shoe-making trade from his father, Chu traveled to England in the early 1980s to study at Cordwinner Technical College in Hackney, graduating with honors in 1983.
First store and celebrity
Choosing to stay in England, Choo opened its first store in Hackney in 1986 in an old hospital building. It didn't take long for Choo's reputation to grow. During the two years of her store, Choo shoes were featured in an eight-page story in Vogue magazine.
Choo soon became a favorite of the celebrity world, particularly Princess Diana, who often wore Choo shoes.
Contacts with the editor from Vogue
It was his relationship with Vogue magazine that contributed to the development of the brand. Despite its growing popularity, Choo was still a small workshop, producing only 20 pairs of handmade shoes a week. But Tamara Godday Mellon, an accessories editor at Vogue who often mentioned him in the development of the fashion industry, saw a bigger market for Choo's creations. She offered the master a partnership to create a ready-made line of shoes.
Together, Choo and Mellon grew up in the business, focusing on creating high-quality shoes, but no longer relying on the idea that every pair had to be made by Choo himself. They signed contracts with Italian factories and opened their first boutique store in London.
By the late 1990s, Choo had stores in Los Angeles and New York, as well as an extensive following of Hollywood celebrities, including Julia Roberts and Renee Zellweger. The brand was officially opened in 1996 in London.
By the turn of the century, the Choo brand had become a global brand that included high-end retail customers. The Choo brand has also expanded to include bags and other accessories.
Handmade only – Couture
But the company's board wasn't doing so well. Chu and Mellon disagreed with the company's management. Jimmy didn't like the idea that even more couples wanted to do it without worrying about its quality. He gave the example of his first practice in Hackney – fewer pairs, but manual work.
In 2001, Chu sold his half of the company to Robert Bensoussan of Equinox Luxury Holdings for $ 30 million.
Today, Jimmy Choo has returned to his roots with a small store in London that serves as the headquarters for the exclusive Jimmy Choo Couture line. This is where Choo creates a small number of pairs of shoes every week and shows a select group of students how to make high-quality shoes.
For Chu, a devout Buddhist, education became an essential part of his life. In recent years, he has become an ambassador for Shoe Education at the London College of Fashion and a spokesperson for the British Council for attracting International students. Choo is also a recipient of the O. B. E. (Most Outstanding Order of the British Empire).
Since 2011, the company has been bought out by Labelux Holding, which deals with coffee and related products. And in 2016, the annual turnover of the Jimmy Choo brand reached $ 467 million. A year later, in April 2017, the brand was bought by Michael Kors. The transaction amount was $ 1.1 billion.
