Jimmy Choo Just Re-Released Some Of Their Most Iconic Shoes
Eight incredible shoes from 1997-2001…the best years of footwear….are back on the market.
This article was made possible by Jimmy Choo…a dream project…fab access to their archive and juicy heels.
Can you hear that? It’s the snappiest slap of the sexiest heels known to mankind touching down on the asphalt! Jimmy Choo has relaunched eight shoes from its archive for the brand’s 30th anniversary. Not just any shoes. Froth-at-the-mouth types of shoes. Gorgeous shoes. The kind of shoes dreams are made of. (The kind of Choos dreams are made of!) Some favorites include a barely-there leopard-print grosgrain heel, “The Leo,” immortalized in the intro scene of Sex and The City. (Even the heel is smothered in the leopard material, so you know it’s good.) There’s a lavender suede sandal titled “72138” that has its toe strap traced with a cirrus slice of white feathers—absolutely angelic—like you’re sliding your foot into heaven. (Also immortalized on Sex and The City!)
There’s also a nubuck loafer, “The Slide,” in mint that shouldn’t be sexy, but is—crushingly so—thanks to where the topline hits, slicing the foot in half. Perhaps the title for the most maximalist, sexiest of shoes goes to “The Bow,” a mouthwatering python-embossed leather heel in a mustard yellow with black spots, as if it’s a wild animal. The cobbler’s cherry on top? A brutal leather string tied into, yes, a darling bow. There’s something for everyone, from longtime fans to curious newcomers. The collection was curated by fashion archivist and writer Alexander Fury and hot young designer Conner Ives, who has already riffed on a few rabidly beloved Choos for his own namesake collection.
While fun and youthfulness have always been cornerstones of the brand, it turns out that it took some time to harness that playfully haute energy into a real business. The Jimmy Choo origin story—from Malaysia to half of the heels at the Met Gala— has shades of My Cousin Vinny—“my father was a mechanic, his father was a mechanic.” Choo’s father was a cobbler, and Jimmy left Malaysia to study shoe design at London’s Cordwainers College in the early 1980s. He stayed in London, selling shoes first under the label Lucky Shoes, and then under his own name—both of which sold out. At one point, Princess Diana discovered that Jimmy Choo had been creating custom pieces to match the dresses in British Vogue, and he began to make shoes for her. She was loyal to the brand, wearing them through her marriage and divorce, the heel height growing every year until her passing.
As business grew, Choo could no longer exist simply as a footwear couturier. His niece Sandra Choi, dubbed “the talent,” and former Vogue editor Tamara Mellon, who later joined as the brand’s business backer, took charge. Choi had a fresh perspective and was daringly innovative, and due to material constraints, she had to think on her feet.
Choi’s knack for taking risks helped Jimmy Choo land on well-buffed feet. Sure, there was Manolo Blahnik, but Jimmy Choo, billed as younger and sexier, was nipping at the Italian label’s heels. One of the best examples of all the outré fun Jimmy Choo was having is in the January 2000 issue of Vogue, in a “Last Look” piece that showed how denim had taken over footwear. In the layout, there was a simple denim Manolo Blahnik pump, essentially a businesswoman’s shoe in the casual fabric, while Choo sliced and diced their blue jeans shoe into a slingback mule with a perforated upper. “When Jimmy Choo hit the market, I feel like they were perceived as a bit more playful and gregarious than others in that rarified air of what to pay for this month — rent or shoes?” says former Vogue Accessories Director Michelle Kessler-Sanders. “Like that friend we all had in the ‘90s who was always getting into the hottest clubs or the hottest water.”
Choo’s flashy glamazon styles were perfect for the industry: the world was on the brink of the maximalist new century and full of searing yolo verve. “I would say there was this energy preparing for the new millennium. So everybody was running towards what it was going to be when it turned into the 2000s,” says Choi. “And what was nice about it is that it was ultra-reminiscent or ultra-experimental.” One re-release from the archive embodies these Y2K carpe-diem delights, matching the more-is-more era: a pair of high-heeled sandals titled “The Thong,” which boast a triangle of chainmail, inspired by kerchief tops, that melts into the top of the foot.
“I think as we headed into the noughties, JC [Jimmy Choo] came to be seen as the sexy option for women who loved stilettos. Manolos were a little more Upper East Side and all business; JC was for clubs and ensuing first dates,” Vogue’s former Creative Director Sally Singer tells me. “The ad campaigns featured brazenly hot models, all tousled-haired and glistening skin.”
By the early 2000s, Jimmy Choo was the fun girls’ shoe of choice. At the time, one New York nail salon offered a $90 “Choo-Choo” pedicure, “where scraps of the paisley, floral, and pink-striped fabrics from Jimmy Choo's summer collection are cut to size, affixed to the top of each nail, and covered with a high-gloss top coat.” Your outfit wasn’t complete without some serious shoe-related heat. At Condé Nast, then at 4 Times Square, The New York Times noted that the publisher had to rip out the Frank Gehry-designed floor in the cafeteria due to the “relentless beating” of heels on the hardwood.
Women lived in their Choos, which, while fantastic for the brand’s durability lore, also means that building and buying back the footwear’s archive hasn’t been easy. Choi has encountered a common issue: the shoes her team finds are often completely demolished. “We’ve found that we can’t even go out and search for some of the original Jimmy Choos because they’ve been loved so well and are in tatters.” It’s a happy problem. “Most of the time, we find our shoes in that state have clearly had a good time.”
No other person ran around in Choos as much as Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and The City. The shoes were megawatt beautiful, and the click and clack of the name’s syllables made it easy to snap off the tongue. “A three-year-old or an 80-year-old can say it,” says Choi. The most iconic moment? In the episode “Where There’s Smoke” (2000), Carrie Bradshaw tries to catch the Staten Island ferry back to Manhattan. She rushes in the re-released lavender suede “72138” heels—only to lose one. “I lost my Choo,” she cries as the ferry pulls away. “If my memory serves me, on the original show, the writers always looked to us for collaboration in achieving their ‘bon mots’,” says And Just Like That’s Molly Rogers, who assisted the Sex and The City’s costume designer Patricia Field. “I do not believe ‘I lost my Choo’ was written before we had the outfit–that line came once Carrie was wearing them in the scene, which is why it’s so funny—it happened organically.”
(Eagle-eyed fans will spot another epic Choo moment on loop: Carrie wears The Leo, strappy leopard print heels in the show’s opening tutu scene. No replay needed.)
Sex and The City helped Jimmy Choo enter the pop culture lexicon. “I think the interesting thing about Jimmy Choo’s rise was how connected it was to pop culture and celebrity, which then was in its real infancy as a major mass influence on fashion,” says Fury. “Jimmy Choo were the first footwear brand to collaborate with Hollywood stylists to dress the red carpet, and of course, they had that incredible Sex and The City moment. It seems very today, but really, that moment was where that whole idea started.”
The brand also found its place in hip-hop: A cursory Google search reveals the brand name was the title of at least three rap songs for over the past 15 years—not including lyrical mentions. In Legally Blonde (2001), Choo made 77 pairs for actress Reese Witherspoon, who kept them all—a clause in her contract. In The Sopranos episode “The Telltale Moozadell,” mafioso Christopher Moltisanti struts into his living room, trash bags in hand. “Anybody around here love the word ‘Jimmy Choo shoes’?” he asks. (Unfortunately, the hot shoes were famously too big for his girlfriend.) “We represent status and going out—not in the loudest way, but certainly in a very sensual way,” says Choi. “And the way Jimmy Choo celebrates that is unique to its own culture.”
That promise of status and sex appeal is built into the shoes. A high-octane Jimmy Choo campaign shot by Raymond Meier for the fall 2000 collection shows a pair of bronzed limbs in mocha knee-high boots, leaning against a massive penthouse window, with the city skyline glinting in the night. At a time when accessories were photographed without celebrity faces, this was classic world-building from the heel up. The message was clear: You, too, could be strutting through the boundless city in impossibly stunning shoes. This was a shoe I grew up with—not because I owned a pair, but because I heard the name and knew exactly what it meant: gorgeous possibilities
.At a time when nostalgia often feels exhausting—when brands lazily default to greatest hits—the Jimmy Choo re-release feels genuinely exciting. They are, simply, beautiful. The kind of shoes you can’t wear without springing for the $15 callus remover and a fresh lacquer on your toes. “After all, there are so many ugly shoes in the world. And yes, an ugly shoe can be funny! A busted piece of footwear can go viral. But a beautiful shoe can take you places. That’s forever. That’s classic. That’s a feeling. There’s a promise—and vertiginous fantasy—in the beauty of a Jimmy Choo heel. Who wouldn’t want to walk in those shoes?
jadore times a thousand omg
Liana! Why do you do this to me when I can’t spend money!! You temptress you