In My Shoes: A Memoir (9 page)

We did the American thing of having a rehearsal dinner the night before, but with an English twist. Henry was best man, and he allowed us to stage the event at Sudeley Castle. Maria Grachvogel made my dress for the evening, a bias-cut cream slit dress with a crocheted lace
tail. We brought over a clear plastic marquee from Paris under which the 170 attendees could sit and enjoy the sight of the illuminated castle while listening to an Irish folk band.

The ceremony the next day was in a church near the estate, small but still large enough to accommodate our three hundred guests, which included, once again, Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley, even though they’d announced their split one week earlier. We weren’t part of the congregation or property owners in the area, so technically all the minister could offer us was a “blessing.” But we went through all the normal vows, and it looked like a proper enough wedding, especially for a couple who’d already been married for several months.

My maid of honor was Anouska Hempel, daughter-in-law of Anouska Hempel the hotelier, and she wore an Elie Saab dress that complimented my Valentino gown. We had young boys in morning coats as ushers, and Matt Clifford, who plays keyboard for the Stones, composed a special processional. It was held late in the afternoon so that the light would be perfect as we stepped out of the chapel and the
Vogue
photographer caught us releasing a flock of doves.

I think all brides are worn out by the time the big day arrives, and true to form I was utterly exhausted. In truth, the wedding was one long stretch of misery for me, and I felt like crying the whole time. I’d been working incredibly hard for Jimmy Choo, planning this huge event alone while trying to keep everyone happy, and I’d just about reached the end of my tether.

The dinner was held in the library at Blenheim, with catering by Admirable Crichton, flowers by Kenneth Turner, and a five-foot-tall cake made of profiteroles. My face hurt from maintaining a beauty
contestant’s frozen smile, and I was counting the hours. I had one more costume change, an amazing gray silk cocktail dress from Chloé for going away. Then I’d throw the bouquet and go back to the hotel and cry.

When it came time for the toasts, Uncle Jay ended his by thanking Matthew for graciously hosting the festivities, and I felt like I’d just been kicked in the stomach. On top of everything else, I now felt utterly humiliated (insult added to injury when you consider that I would pay for everything in the end), and I felt terrible for my dad.

Matthew had flown over an American disco cover band called Boogie Knights to play at the reception. I drifted around the floor for a moment or two, faking merriment, but very soon I found my way to the small room just off the main hall that had been set up as a lounge. I sat there in my wedding dress, staring off into space, as vacant as I’d ever been at Heathfield, unable to connect with anyone.

We had to be out of the palace by two a.m., and by then it had begun to rain, and Matthew and I left in a blue Bentley, driving down the very long drive as sparklers and Roman candles shot up into the night sky.

There were two small hotels in the nearby village of Woodstock, and we were staying at the one called the Bear, a Tudor bed-and-breakfast with the musty bar and the shabby green carpet. I went up to the room alone, and Matthew partied until dawn with his American friends, all of whom were staying at the place next door. It was not an auspicious beginning.

•  •  •  •

OUR WEDDING PRESENT FROM UNCLE
jay was a honeymoon trip to Bali, and on the eighteen-hour flight from London I was a zombie,
getting a good head start on a serious commitment to rest and relaxation. We were in the South Pacific for two weeks, and for the first time in years I had some genuine time off, with no faxes coming in at all hours.

Some might wonder about two reformed addicts being in such a faraway place on their honeymoon, but we didn’t need NA meetings to keep us on the straight and narrow path. We stayed very busy with tons of scuba diving, and I even picked up my advanced certification.

One day we were out in a boat, anchored above a reef just off one of the smaller islands where the currents draw you around in a big circle. This was the last part of the advanced course where you have to swim around a patch of treacherous water, and we employed the buddy system. I was in the water with my partner when I saw Matthew signal that he was going up. My buddy and I followed, and luckily we all popped up just alongside the hull. We climbed aboard and waited for the other people to come along—a couple from Hong Kong and the dive instructor. And then we waited some more.

When we’d been waiting about forty-five minutes, Matthew said to me, “This isn’t good.” He had calculated the current and the wind, and he said, “They’re being swept out to sea. I can tell you exactly where they’re going to pop up.”

He explained to the mate what must have happened, but the man wouldn’t take the initiative. Then another hour went by and I said, “Matthew, you’re going to have to do something. They’re going to drown.”

Having spent months every year in Maine and in the Caribbean sailing, Matthew had his captain’s license and knew how to handle big boats. In the end, he had to push the mate away from the controls and
commandeer the wheel. He started the engine and headed out to where he figured the wind and the current would be taking the three missing people, and he nailed it.

He did such an amazing job—he pretty much made a beeline right to where they were treading water, still being carried out by the current. I had never seen three more terrified people, or a more grateful trio. The instructor was so shaken that he quit his job and gave up diving. The couple from Hong Kong continued to send Matthew a Christmas card for years afterward.

Matthew had so many talents and admirable qualities—it’s unfortunate that emotional stability was not among them. When you go into rehab, they tell you that the first five years are the most difficult because that’s when your emotions are still very raw. That’s where the saying “one day at a time” comes in. They also advise you not to take up with a newcomer to sobriety because that person may relapse and drag you down with them. When I met Matthew we were both sober, but sobriety is so much more difficult for people who are bipolar. So I knew he was vulnerable, with his mood swings, his dancing all night, and his rages. But, eyes wide open, I still thought I’d hang in there, and I tried to have confidence in my husband’s character and resolve, and not just in his skill with boats.

Still, it was not an easy time for either of us.

London is like New York in that it’s all about work, and not fitting in made Matthew restless. At parties he had trouble talking to the other men, and so his default was to follow me around. My father was not impressed by how his new son-in-law was shouldering his responsibilities as a married man.

Then on a trip to Lineapelle with me, Matthew happened upon the exhibit from the Vibram company, where he saw a sole for a wind-surfing shoe, and it gave him an idea. Why not take the new structural innovations in athletic shoes and adapt them for dress and casual shoes? He decided to launch his own line for men based on this new concept—a traditional upper, but a lightweight, shock-absorbing sole that incorporated rubber, polyurethane, liquid silicone, and similar materials. He would call his brand Harry’s of London, named after his grandfather, Harry Stokes, who had been quite the dandy. The logo would be the heron from the Mellon family crest.

Matthew set up the company, and Anna Conti’s brother Massimo connected him with some men’s factories, and I have to hand it to him—the shoe was really innovative, and Matthew made a fantastic product. The only problem was that he hired a woman as chief executive officer who didn’t fully appreciate the competitive advantage of their distinctive niche. She tried to expand into traditional leather-soled shoes, when they should have focused on the dress shoe with running shoe technology, which Cole Haan managed to pick up on and exploit very nicely.

Even so, the company is still around. Matthew sold a majority stake to La Compagnie Financière Richemont SA, and today they have their own shops and are represented in twenty countries.

For our first winter vacation as an old married couple, Matthew chartered a yacht with a captain, and we invited a number of people to come sailing with us in the Bahamas. The guests included Vassi Chamberlain and her husband, Adrian Harris; Kate Reardon, who is now the editor in chief of
Tatler
; Christian Hammer; and Yazmen Olclay.

We started off in Nassau and were supposed to be crossing over to
Harbour Island when a huge storm came up. After the incident on our honeymoon, I knew we could count on Matthew’s seamanship. Also, this boat was at least seventy-five feet, so we were perfectly safe, but the waves seemed to be about ten feet and the swell was pounding and knocking us around, and some of our guests freaked out. Meanwhile, Matthew was up on the deck, entranced by the whole thing. Then everyone began to get seasick, so down below we had all these London socialites sitting in the lounge vomiting into plastic bags.

By the time we made it into port, our guests were understandably eager to stretch their legs. I’m not sure anyone uttered the fatal words, “We need a drink,” but if someone had, I’m sure Matthew would have seconded the motion. The long and the short of it is that all the guys went into town, and when Matthew came back he seemed utterly paranoid, so much so that he hid in the ship’s head for two hours.

It turned out that he’d picked up some cocaine on the island, and next thing you know he was convinced that the FBI was installed on the next boat over, watching us with night vision goggles.

Sad to say, but for us, this was already the beginning of the end.

Once we were back in London, life did not become any easier because I was in the office every day, working very hard, and Matthew had nothing but free time on his hands, and I’d come home and find him freebasing in the kitchen. Then his mania would take over, and he might step out to buy a paper and not come back for days. I was constantly trying to track him down, calling family members, calling car services, knowing that he was capable of turning up anywhere in the world. He would check into hotels, start getting the paranoid delusions of cocaine psychosis, then leave without paying his bill. And then, of
course, the hotel managers would call me to clean up after him and to settle his accounts.

At times I had to track him down relying on his limo company. Once Henry and I found him in a crack house in Notting Hill, and we went in and found some gangster type sitting in the kitchen, with Matthew’s wallet on the table in front of him. For a moment I was worried that my husband had been murdered. Then Henry said to the drug dealer, “You better tell us where he is, otherwise you’re going to be looking down the wrong end of a shotgun.” It was all bluster, and the dealer was not terribly impressed. Later, we found out that Matthew had been hiding under the bed.

I still thought I could help him and turn it around. I always tried to keep him sober, and I tried to be helpful without “enabling” his addiction, but one never knows.

Matthew and I went to Saint Tropez for the summer, staying on Valentino’s boat, and I discovered that I was pregnant. Despite everything we were going through I was thrilled. I was thirty-three, and having a child was definitely on my to-do list, even if the father was clearly not going to be much help.

So now I had a baby in the works, as well as a husband who was sometimes endearing and wonderfully funny, and sometimes completely mad. I was still trying to manage a global brand with a business partner who was working against me every step of the way. The potboiler plot was coming to a nice simmer, and yet the villains who would send it boiling over had yet to appear.

A
s 2000 came to a close, Jimmy Choo was turning a profit of around £3 million a year. We had our own London boutique and we were represented at 450 other stores, including Harrods and Selfridges. To top it all off, we’d won a British Fashion Council Award, which Jimmy insisted on accepting on our behalf, even though his design contribution had been nil. Jimmy’s personal publicist was running the awards and was more than happy for him to go through with the sham. “I leave the ready-to-wear to my partner and team,” he told the press, rather missing the point of the accomplishment (i.e., the ready-to-wear) for which the award was being given.

In the United States,
Sex and the City
and the Oscars had ensconced us solidly in the pantheon of pop culture. With a new administration coming to Washington in January 2001, both presidential daughters wore Jimmy Choo to their father’s inauguration. We were poised for explosive growth well beyond our own three stores, Saks, and Giorgio’s.

Every quarter we held a board meeting in St. Helier on Jersey, the Channel Island where the company was chartered. Jimmy rarely showed up, but when he did, he almost always voted against whatever proposal was on the table. Voting strength was proportionate to ownership, so having a half owner with such negativity could definitely
throw a wrench in the works. Despite all the evidence that the time was right to expand in the United States, Jimmy was dead set against it. My father tried time and time again to make him understand how he was going to benefit as the company grew and increased in value. My father would lay it all out, and Jimmy would smile and say, “Yes, yes, yes.” But after a while our relationship deteriorated to the point that any conversation, rational or otherwise, was out of the question. Not only had we “taken Sandra away from him,” we’d blown his cover by letting the press in on the fact that he had nothing to do with designing our collections.

Eventually, the breakdown got to the point that my father said, “Would you consider an offer for your shares?”

Jimmy’s response was to sue us on twenty-two counts of breach of contract.

I don’t know how Jimmy found the cash to hire the lawyers, but I do know that he’d taken on an adviser named Ivan Sheer, who was not an attorney but an executive at Warner Music. When Jimmy and his team showed up at a meeting at the Sheraton in Belgravia, the main complaint was the way in which we’d set up the separate US company with Philip Rogers, but the claim was deemed to be without merit and the case never went to court. We assumed it was a ploy to try to intimidate us into paying more for Jimmy’s shares. And Sheer, who was taking a hefty percentage of Jimmy’s proceeds, seemed highly motivated to sell.

But this feuding was not good for business. We’d put enormous effort into building the brand, and internal fighting could tarnish the image of a product that was meant to be glamorous, sexy, and fun. As
I would eventually discover much to my regret, and only with the passage of time, where Jimmy really hurt the company that carried his name was in refusing to sell his shares to my father and me. He was simply too filled with resentment to follow that otherwise very natural and very logical course.

Until this time we had been entirely self-funding. My father had put up the initial £150,000 of seed money, and after that first sale to Saks we were self-funding. When we needed a bank loan to set up shop in North America, my father took out a £600,000 mortgage on his house to provide the additional capital. If only Jimmy had been willing to sell to us, we would have been in the incredibly enviable position of owning the company outright. We simply could have gone to the bank, taken out another loan, and retained complete control. But as a sandal-wearing Greek first observed a couple of thousand years ago,
Pathei mathos
. We suffer into knowledge.

After Jimmy finally agreed to sell—but not to us—we entered into a very tense six-month period as we tried to find a new partner to buy his shares. During this time, of course, I was also growing larger by the day with my pregnancy and with all the attendant discomforts. It was not to be the peaceful period of gestation I’d hoped for.

Matthew put us in touch with a friend of his who was an investment banker in New York, who in turn put us in touch with Javan Bunch from Merrill Lynch. Javan introduced us to the Gucci Group, to the people who represented the Wertheimer family, and to Chanel, who declined to make an offer. (After researching our operations, however, Chanel did decide to start working with Anna Conti for their own shoe line.)

We went through various proposals from the other companies, but
the pieces never seemed to fit. And then a friend of mine named Alexandra Montazzi called and said, “I just met a guy named Robert Bensoussan, and he’s interested in your business. Would you like to meet him?”

I said, “Sure,” which is how we were so blithely introduced to the world of private equity. If only I had known.

•  •  •  •

ROBERT BENSOUSSAN WORKED WITH A
financial group called Phoenix Equity Partners, who were said to have nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars to play with. They had a consumer, leisure, and retail division, run by a man named David Burns, but the company as a whole was more inclined to invest in cement factories than fashion.

David seemed very keen, but he was concerned that his partners might not be as interested as he was, so he asked them to go home and discuss the acquisition with the women in their lives. This bit of informal market research brought back a resounding endorsement of the brand, as well as the acquisition.

For his part, Robert had a long history with luxury brands. He’d worked in finance for Lainière de Roubaix, then ran a ready-to-wear line for Charles Jourdan. He then worked for the French fashion house Sonia Rykiel, then for Christian Lacroix in Paris, Gianfranco Ferré in Milan, then joined the board of Inter Parfums, Inc., in New York, and was retained by Rose Marie Bravo as her personal adviser to work on the repositioning of the Burberry brand in Europe and Asia. In 1999, he put together the leveraged buyout of Joseph, bringing in Albert Frère and LV Capital as partners.

At first blush, then, here was a man who knew the fashion business inside and out. Upon reflection, of course, one begins to wonder: That’s a great many jobs in a very short period of time, and each job is of surprisingly short tenure. Is there an issue here?

Robert Bensoussan didn’t want to simply acquire Jimmy Choo. He wanted to create a separate entity for Phoenix called Equinox Luxury Holdings, with himself as chairman and chief executive.

We negotiated through the second half of the summer, and the Phoenix Equity investment committee was to meet on September 11, 2001, to decide whether or not to invest in Jimmy Choo. Robert was traveling to Pont Street to meet with Raj Patel, our accountant, and Lou Rodwell, the company secretary, when the terrorist attacks hit New York and Washington and seemed to put the whole world on hold.

David Burns rang up to say that everything would now have to be reconsidered because all around us the share prices for luxury goods were crashing to earth. Dad and I were not overly concerned because we would be keeping our investment in the business, rolling over the vast majority of our shares. The only person selling equity was Jimmy, which was, of course, the whole point of the transaction.

A few weeks later David rang up to get our results. Post-9/11, our sales had actually increased by 40 percent, even in New York. We had no explanation, except for the maxim, “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.”

Meanwhile, we weren’t just sitting on our hands while Phoenix deliberated. We moved from Pont Street to a 3,000-square-foot office on Ixworth Place. We were hiring more people, including more design talent and more product development people, as well as more help in
finance. In keeping with our history of penny pinching, though, the offices were quite simple and the furniture was from IKEA.

In October we moved the store from Motcomb Street to 169 Draycott Avenue in South Kensington, just around the corner from Joseph. Retailers like Ralph Lauren were moving into the neighborhood, making it more of a shopping mecca. To celebrate the new store, heavily pregnant or not, I held a lunch at Drones to benefit the Twin Towers Fund.

Ultimately, David Burns and Phoenix overcame their anxieties and agreed to buy, and Dad managed to roll in the rights to the US market that had been acquired by Philip Rogers and Annie Humphries. In terms of personal gain, it made more sense for Philip and Annie to hold on and grow their equity, but they agreed to sell out of loyalty to my dad and to protect the deal with Phoenix.

We discussed various options at first, and we knew that Phoenix had done deals with varying equity positions—minority, majority. Robert, however, pushed them to acquire a controlling interest.

The offer that emerged was for Phoenix to pay £9 million for Jimmy’s shares, with their stake to be valued as 51 percent of Jimmy Choo Limited. At first Dad said, “No, we’re not doing it.” He was never one to surrender control of anything. But I was so desperate to get rid of Jimmy that I talked him into taking the deal.

“How bad could it be?” I said.

Later, I could only blame myself.

The £9 million for Jimmy was certainly not a bad payout for his allowing us to use his name. But even with this windfall, Jimmy pushed Robert to invest in his couture business. Phoenix balked at that,
although they did allow Jimmy to license his own name for seven years, in exchange for a royalty of one pound a year. He had to brand his product Jimmy Choo Couture, and his shoes always had to cost more than our ready-to-wear product. He was also enjoined from ever speaking to the press about the business without approval from us.

For an additional $4 million, Phoenix would simultaneously acquire the US business, including our three US stores as well as distribution rights. That part of the deal would yield $2 million for Philip Rogers and $2 million for my dad, a sum that he shared with me. This was the first real fruit of my labors with Jimmy Choo, and I used $400,000 of it to repay Matthew for the wedding.

All of Jimmy Choo, both European and US, would now be combined under a new entity, Yearnoxe Limited, of which Dad and I together would own 49 percent. The fact that someone else would now have the final say in how we ran the company was going to take some getting used to. Little did I know just how much lay ahead.

Even before the deal closed, we began to have meetings in order to get to know our new partners and to try to educate them about our business. At the first of these, which took place at the Sheraton in London, I suggested that we buy a factory. We were having issues with people copying our shoes, and I thought we could improve our margins by having our own dedicated facility to produce at least a part of the collection. Robert didn’t like the idea, though, so I let it drop. A few years later we did a deal with Petra in which we acquired one-half of one factory, and sure enough, it produced all the savings and efficiencies I’d predicted. But this time around it was “Robert’s idea.”

This was my first, painful lesson in private equity: The founder is
no longer in charge, and the battle of ideas is always subordinate to the battle of egos.

But back at that first meeting at the Sheraton, the other players from the Phoenix Group began to ask follow-up questions about the intricacies of production. I was the only one who could answer because I was the only one intricately involved in operations. In fact, I’d been up to my elbows in leather and lasts for five years, so the conversation wound up being a mini-seminar in shoe design and production, as well as the ins and outs of doing business in Italy.

Later, when the meeting was over and we were walking out of the hotel, my father turned to me with a smile and said, “You know, you and I are going to split our 49 percent right down the middle.”

I had never really given much thought to my father’s share versus my share, but coming from him, this declaration of parity was a welcome acknowledgment of my contribution. Of course it felt good, but the way my mind works, the relief I feel at avoiding failure or abuse is always more pronounced than any real pleasure in achievement or recognition. I knew all along what I’d been contributing. I knew that this split was the way it should be and that it would have been grossly unfair if it had been otherwise. Now it was simply being confirmed.

The more powerful validation, though, came after Phoenix completed their due diligence. After David Burns had spoken to all the staff, he asked my dad to sign a document formally establishing that the Yeardye shares were to be equally divided between the two of us. Clearly what he’d learned was that I was the one making all the day-to-day decisions, and he wanted my ownership stake to be explicit for fear that otherwise I might leave.

It was at this point that Dad set up a couple of trusts in Jersey to hold the family’s 49 percent of Jimmy Choo, with one-half earmarked for me. Matthew pushed me to gain the utmost clarity between what was to benefit me and what was to benefit the rest of the family. He’d met my mother, and he’d heard my stories.

“If anything happens to your dad,” he said, “you’re screwed.”

The upshot was a main family trust to be called Marqueta, and then a second trust to hold my shares called Araminta, which was the name we’d chosen for our baby, who we knew was going to be a little girl. As I reviewed the documents I looked for the word “irrevocable.” Some people view “a mother’s love” as the absolute bedrock of certainty. I did not. And as I would discover a few years later, my mother had been pushing for a split of 70/30 even then.

Although our 49 percent stake represented a sizable asset, it was not terribly liquid. Our ownership stake in the company would be locked up until Phoenix decided to exit. In private equity, this is usually a period of three years.

Robert met with Dad and me at my house for the signing on November 19, 2001. Dad would be chairman of the board of the new company and I would be president. Robert was named CEO, but this was supposed to be an interim arrangement for only six months or so. But then he decided that he liked being the head of a company with our kind of name recognition, especially, I think, among stylish women. So he stayed on.