Shoe Executive in Legal Scuffle With Mother

LOS ANGELES — Tamara Mellon, the savvy entrepreneur who took Jimmy Choo shoes from a dodgy London neighborhood to the world's trendiest retail districts, has battled drug problems, a failed marriage, and scandal-hungry reporters.

Now she's taking on her mother. Ms. Mellon filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court last month that accuses her mother, Ann Yeardye of Beverly Hills, of improperly receiving about $8 million in proceeds from the sale of London-based Jimmy Choo in 2004.

The suit isn't expected to scuff the brand that found fame on the feet of "Sex and the City" heroine Carrie Bradshaw and stars such as Naomi Watts, Helen Mirren, and Zhang Ziyi. It shouldn't affect the Choo domain, which has grown to more than 65 retail locations.

But the case has brought to the surface the kind of family feud that is usually discreetly handled out of public view. In a measure of the bitterness lurking behind the legalese, Ms. Mellon's suit accuses her mother of keeping money intended for her 5-year-old granddaughter Araminta — known as "Minty" — so she can support her Beverly Hills lifestyle.

"I tried every means possible to settle what should have remained a private family matter away from a courthouse and out of the public eye. But my mother left me with no choice," Ms. Mellon, Jimmy Choo's president, said in a statement.

For her part, Ms. Yeardye had hoped "that this would be privately and amicably resolved" and "is very disappointed that the lawsuit was filed," her attorney, Alan Croll, said.

Ms. Mellon, 40, who reportedly was on a safari in Africa with actor boyfriend Christian Slater when the suit was filed, has lived an eventful life that has garnered her a great deal of attention in her native England.

"Tamara has had more than her fair share of tabloid ink here, that's for sure," Lauren Goldstein Crowe, a London-based journalist who is writing a book about the Jimmy Choo brand, said. "I think at this point, people are beginning to feel a bit sorry for her -- behind their envy."

In a sense, the suit is a hanging chad, a bit of unfinished business left over from the sale of the company Ms. Mellon founded in 1996 with a Malaysian cobbler named Jimmy Choo.

Back then, Choo was working in semi-obscurity, making bespoke shoes in a nondescript shop in London's East End. Fashion insiders and a few high-profile tastemakers, including Princess Diana, would pull up in their town cars to get their footwear fixes.

Ms. Mellon, a shoe-obsessed assistant at a British fashion magazine, was a Choo fan known at the time mostly for her exploits as a party girl. Her family background was decidedly fashion-forward. Her mother, the former Ann Davis, was a Chanel No. 5 model in the 1960s. Her father, Tom Yeardye, was a co-founder of the Vidal Sassoon hair-care empire.