Tamara Mellon Leaves Jimmy Choo With Little Notice

Getty Images

Tamara Mellon, who co-founded Jimmy Choo, and gave the luxe shoe line a handbag element, left the company on Sunday November 13, with 85 million pounds in her pocket, somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 million dollars.

She'd sold the business in May of 2011 to Labelux, a luxury firm that paid 525 million pounds for it. Mellon and her CEO Joshua Schulman were to stay on in creative consultancy roles, but abruptly left, giving no public explanation.

Mellon was the perfect face of a luxe brand geared at women: chic, thin, beautiful, stylish, and she had been married to Matthew Mellon, of the famous old wealthy aristocratic Mellon family. She had a glamourous much-talked about love life, too, after her divorce -- romances with Kid Rock and Christian Slater always hit the papers. 

Mellon just received Harper's Bazaar's Businesswoman of the Year Award, but didn't show up to collect the honor, which Elle McPherson picked up for her. No one's giving an explanation for the sudden departure, but insiders are whispering that Mellon and Schulman are onto something else, and may in fact, start a brand new brand.