Yes, that was the title of Jimmy
Choo's slides presentation at the recent
IWEC 2007 . How true indeed as his creations were made to beautify thy feet. Just look at some of his must have and to die for high heels. Simple yet elegant and oh so lady like... I can imagine myself walking in his shoes and feeling like a princess, so graceful, confident, sexy and beautiful...
Before attending the congress, I was hoping and wishing that there will be some lucky draws and that maybe just maybe I could win a pair of Jimmy
Choo's shoes. Or maybe he would give away some of his beautifully crafted shoes to some lucky participants including me...but unfortunately, that is just a wishful thinking of mine as none of it ever happens...sigh...
Anyway, let's talk about the designer himself,
YBhg. Prof.
Dato' Jimmy
Choo,
OBE is a remarkable person who made his first shoes when he was only 11 years old! His dad was a shoes designer and naturally following the footsteps of his dad coupled with his own interest, he pursued a career in the same field as shoes designer. Trained at London College of Fashion, which was then known as
Cordwainers College, the 46 years old
Penangnite graduated with distinction. He started his shoes making business in an ex-hospital building in Britain.
His brand name started to emerge tremendously after
Vogue did an eight-page spread featuring his quality footwear in 1988. Since then, he never looked back and of
coz his most famous client is the late Princess Diana, whom he worked for about 7 years. During those years he was not allowed to tell anybody that he was the shoes designer for the Princess. It was only after she passed on that people knew who made her elegant sexy shoes..
Jimmy
Choo is no longer involved in the fashion house that he first founded. Initially, he sold half of his shares to the lady who once featured him in the
Vogue and his niece. However, the former
Vogue friend i.e. Tamara Mellon bought the fashion house
completely in 2001.
Today, Jimmy
Choo is helping budding shoes designers and makers in Malaysia by setting up an institute for
shoe making. He is also involved in many charity works as he believes in giving back to the community. He is also a proud Malaysian who doesn't mind to promote Malaysia wherever he goes. In fact during the Congress, one of the speakers,
Maria Brown, MD for Asian Food Channel asked him if he agrees to be in AFC show featuring Malaysian cuisines in which he happily agreed. Another speaker i.e
Chin-Ning Chu requested to take a photo with him so that she can show to her publisher that she actually met Jimmy
Choo - she has a chapter in her book (The
Art of War for Women) that used Jimmy
Choo's name to represent the word "high heels". Jimmy
Choo is also a fun and witty guy as he kids many times during his talk. When asked about where does he gets his inspirations from. He said " As long as you love what you're doing, the inspirations will come naturally". Among all the speakers, he was by far the most popular one. People were
queuing at the mic eager to ask him questions. The speakers even requested the MC that they wanted to take pictures with Jimmy
Choo right after his talk.
And of
coz yours truly didn't want to miss out too as I shamelessly went to the front and took pictures with him for remembrance. Mind you, I wasn't the only one as there were some prominent people i.e.
Datuks who were as eager as me too! So people, disappointingly to say that I didn't get a pair of Jimmy
Choo's shoes but at least I managed to take a couple of pictures with him
hehe...
So that's my not quite up close personal with Jimmy Choo folks! ;p
