After selling her Jimmy Choo empire for more than $800 million, Tamara Mellon is ready to announce her much-anticipated new venture, her own namesake fashion label.
Mellon has been quietly working on her grand return to the fashion world and the launch of her line, which will be called Tamara Mellon, Page Six has learned.
And she has won the backing of two other fashion giants with their own eponymous businesses, Tory Burch and Tommy Hilfiger, both investors in Mellon’s new label.
After selling her upmarket women’s footwear business to Labelux in 2011, a source tells us, “Tamara signed a non-compete with Jimmy Choo, which expired in February. She has since been fund-raising for her new business in both London and New York and has attracted a lot of investors, including Baron Jonathan Marland.
“The plan is to open a number of upmarket flagship stores in New York, Los Angeles and London, with further plans to expand into Asia. There is also some talk of a move into lifestyle once things really take off,” the insider said.
Mellon founded her shoe empire with Choo, a Malaysian-born cobbler whom she met while working at UK Vogue — and who at the time had a modest business in Hackney, East London — and turned it into a global empire.
She was said to have walked away from Jimmy Choo in November 2011 with a personal take of $135 million of the $800 million shared among investors.
We’re told Mellon, who recently moved to New York full time, is also getting friendly advice from her boyfriend, uber-agent Mike Ovitz, whose daughter Kimberly Ovitz is a rising fashion star, and Burch, a close friend.
In a recent interview, Mellon said she was also working on a book, but, “Fashion is what I know.”
Concerning leaving Jimmy Choo, she told the New York Times she wanted to get out while she was young enough to start a new business. “I’d rather take the risk and have a new challenge,” she said. Mellon declined to comment further last night.