Tamara Mellon, founder and president of Jimmy Choo, is the living embodiment of a Candance Bushnell character. Smart, glamorous and wealthy, with a celebrity boyfriend and jet-set lifetstyle covered by the tabloids, she could indeed have stepped straight out of Lipstick Jungle. It all began in 1996, when, after stints at a couple of fashion magazines, she approached the East End-based couture cobbler Jimmy Choo with a proposal for a ready-to-wear shoe company. The rest is heel-history, and now with
74 stores worldwide and an estimated worth of £102m, according to a report in the Times earlier this year, Ms Mellon is one of the most prolific faces in the fashion business (Jimmy Choo handbags were launched in 2001, and there are plans for a perfume next year). And she is still taking up new challenges: since spring 2007 she has sat on the board of directors for 1970s label Halston - which she relaunched with Harvey Weinstein's company and involvement from stylist Rachel Zoe.
All this success comes at a price, of course, as various muck-raking of her personal life in the press has shown. Her divorce from aristo heir Matthew Mellon in 2005 (with whom she has a daughter, Araminta) has kept the gossip hacks happy, as has a reported romance with Kid Rock (indeed, she even had a highly-publicised dalliance with a younger man, like Lipstick Jungle's magazine editor Nico). She is currently dating Christian Slater, with whom she was most recently seen on the red carpet at the Emmy Awards, sporting her trademark über-glossy look of long wavy tresses, sexy-Grecian style gown, clutch bag and heels. Her style mantra is, "It doesn't matter what you are wearing - if you have good shoes and a good bag, you'll look right." Danielle Radojcin
