Call it real-time ready-to-wear. Along with a scandalous new book, former Jimmy Choo chief creative officer Tamara Mellon has just introduced a luxe lifestyle line based on a novel concept: capsule collections that drop every month.
Her new quickie approach eliminates the long wait between the runway and the rack (often a six-month gap). Which means her slinky clothes, shoes, handbags and accessories are actually sold in season.
“I don’t know any woman who buys her coats in July,” says Mellon, referring to the historically out-of-sync retail calendar. “This is buy now, wear now.”
The sultry, 46-year-old Mellon is famed for her towering ambition and glamorous lifestyle. The former British Vogue accessories editor also co-founded the Jimmy Choo company, elevating the eponymous bespoke shoemaker into a global sensation. Under her creative direction, the label was name-checked 34 times on “Sex and the City,” garnered prestigious industry awards and was sold in 2011 for about $800 million.
But as the brand’s stature skyrocketed, so did the drama quotient. Mellon fell out with cobbler Choo and clashed with the various private equity investors who funded the business. (She stepped down in 2011.)
Her brutally honest new memoir, “In My Shoes,” chronicles these feuds, along with her divorce from banking heir Matthew Mellon and ugly family legal wrangles.
Mellon, who lives in New York and London, is determined not to make the same mistakes twice.
Bergdorf Goodman’s style guru Linda Fargo praises Mellon’s new line as a “universal language of style: clothes that are casual and at ease but always in some way sexy — fabrics and shapes that are rather seasonless, clean and versatile.”
Standouts include “Sweet Revenge,” a leather legging that ends in a high-heeled boot, along with a leopard trench and swingy fringe skirt.
The collection is available at Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Net-a-Porter and Nordstrom, and will debut on tamaramellon.com in January.
Mellon also has plans to open stores in New York and London next year and branch into sunglasses, cosmetics and fragrances in the future.
All of which, of course, she will control. Make that real-time revenge.