Free In My Shoes: A Memoir by Tamara Mellon, William Patrick

just set up their own firm, Brower Lewis PR. They, too, were just starting out, hungry and talented, and we were able to put them on a retainer of something like £500 a month.
    Natalie and Tracey went with me to our first Paris show in the spring of 1997. This collection was our breakthrough moment, and itwas the result of my inspirations and Sandra’s skill as a sketch artist. We now had good samples as well, but we were still on the fringes. We’d rented space at Tranoï, an exhibition for the edgier realms of fashion that was set up in tents and stalls in the Jardins des Tuileries, just down from the Crillon.
    It was in this outdoor environment more suited to a craft show or a farmer’s market that I first met Julie Townsend, the buyer from Saks. She stopped by, looked at our samples, and said, “These are good. These are great!” Then she backed up her enthusiasm by placing an order for three thousand pairs of shoes.
    Just like that we were in. We’d cracked it.
    My father had told me that if we could sell twenty pairs of shoes a week from our Motcomb Street shop, and priced them at roughly £250 a pair, we’d have a business. Now here we were with three thousand pairs en route to the leading retailer in North America. Suddenly, we had the rarest of good fortunes for a start-up company: positive cash flow. Our sales were £250,000 that first year, with the shop rental costing us £15,000, and only one employee other than Sandra and myself.
    After that huge breakthrough with Julie’s order we still had a show to run, and other customers to talk to, but already my mind was moving ahead. I was positioning Jimmy Choo as a luxury brand, so we were out of place with all the fringe designers and jewelry makers at Tranoï. As we closed up shop that day, I remember walking past the Crillon and thinking, “Someday, that’s where I want us to be.”
    Brower Lewis was brilliant at getting our story out and setting up appointments with the editors to get them to come see the collection. That spring they also helped us throw a fabulous party at theWellington Club for about three hundred guests that was a huge hit. I remember somebody mentioning that if this business was as successful as that party, we’d do very nicely. So clearly we were getting the “style” and “image” part of the business down as well.
    The fashion world is like a traveling circus—the same designers and the same editors showing up season after season on the same schedule in New York, London, Paris, and Milan. But I didn’t like the idea of being seen in a crowd along with all the other shoe lines, isolated in the separate universe reserved for accessories. So in the fall of 1997, rather than go to FFANY once again and simply hire space in the exhibits at the Plaza, we came for Fashion Week instead and took a suite at the Carlyle, got rid of the bed, and filled the room with shoes.
    For Fashion Week in London, we set up in my apartment, and Sandra and I would literally sit on the floor while the buyers told us what they wanted. I would write out the order by hand and then fax it to Anna.
    Now that we had demand, Anna Conti was expanding our network of suppliers, adding the Ballin factory in Padua, outside Venice, and Paoletti near Florence. Her husband made gift boxes in Florence, and she sat in a tiny office in his factory while I was downstairs at Motcomb Street and we would fax each other back and forth.
    When we came back to Paris for the spring 1998 show, I had another meeting with Julie Townsend, and what she had to say was just about as exciting as that first huge order she’d placed the year before. Our first year sell-through at Saks was an incredible 95 percent, and we were indeed exhibiting our wares in a suite at the Crillon.
    The other recurring event for anyone in the shoe business is, ofcourse, Lineapelle, which takes place twice a year in Bologna. Shoes are made from separate components that have to be assembled, and all the best