Sunday, March 22, 2009

The Towering World of Jimmy Choo by Lauren Goldstein Crowe & Sagra Maceira DeRosen

Flap copy from ARC:
The Towering World of Jimmy Choo examines the world’s seemingly insatiable appetite for luxury goods by telling the behind-the-scenes tale of one of the most talked-about brands of our age. Jimmy Choo was a London shoemaker with a few famous clients when Tamara Yeardye, a London society girl, convinced him to launch a factory-produced luxury shoe line. Twelve years later, Jimmy Choo is a household name, and Tamara still presides over what is now one of the most successful luxury brands in the world, worth some $350 million. But along the way she was tested at every turn. The story of how the Jimmy Choo brand got to where it is today is one of love, hate, sex, fashion, finance, drugs, celebrity, power, intrigue, and ambition. And every word of it is true. Compelling to followers of both fashion and business, The Towering World of Jimmy Choo takes readers into a complex and rarified world.

This book was an interesting read about business and (more importantly) shoes. I am not a business person, but this book was obviously written to appeal to lay-readers like me so the business elements were well-explained and, I suspect, fairly rudimentary. I picked up the book because it was about Jimmy Choo shoes, and it did deliver an interesting look at the early development of the brand. Unfortunately, the writing got repetitive and rather gossipy; I was much less interested in the details of Tamara's divorce that in the details of Jimmy's ouster from the company, but the book is much more about Tamara and her life than about Jimmy Choo and his. All in all, an enjoyable read despite the lack of substance.

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