Tamara Mellon is the London society girl whose wedding to millionaire banking-heir Matthew Mellon in 2000 was attended by Liz Hurley and Hugh Grant -- and another 388 guests who mostly wore Jimmy Choos.

She is also the glamorous public face of Choo, the designer shoes which were the first sexy stilettos to get a mention on Sex and The City, in spite of Carrie finally falling for Manolo Blahniks.

In recent years, Tamara has been associated with Hollywood star Christian Slater -- she dated him for two years following the break-down of her marriage and the couple reportedly split last March. And it is Tamara, a glossy girl-about-town, who has long been credited with launching Jimmy Choo, a shoemaker who worked in a small workshop in the East End of London, into the world of celebrity and multi-million dollar designer shoe deals.

Michelle Obama wore Jimmy Choo shoes on inauguration day. And celebrity fans include Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Katie Holmes and Natalie Imbruglia.

Yet it was Tamara's late father, the Irish entrepreneur Tom Yeardye who co-founded the Vidal Sassoon hair empire, who first had the vision to put his millions behind tiny and delicate, if tremendously expensive, shoes.

A spoilt teenager who ended up in rehab, Tamara found her feet, and literally her Jimmy Choos, when her Irish father got her a job in a business she was really passionate about.

From the start, her father -- the son of an Irish nurse who grew up in a working class estate in London -- indulged his only daughter with the spoils of his hard labours.

Yeardye started out in the glamorous world of the London restaurant business, and many reports have suggested he was a former acquaintance of the East End gangsters the Kray twins. He was also reputed to have lived with sex kitten movie star Diana Dors before his marriage to Chanel model Anna Davis.

London socialite Tamara, his only daughter, always got the best from her rich father, including an expensive education at St Mary's in Berkshire, and finishing school in Switzerland.

When she refused to go to university, her workaholic father got her a job at the designer boutique, Browns of London, before finding her positions in PR and at Vogue magazine.

Tamara's best girlfriends during her twenties were poor little rich It-girls Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and Tamara Beckwith.

Yet, enter designer shoes into her life, and Tamara revealed herself to have the determination which made her father a killer businessman.

Her former husband, Matthew Mellon, said at the end their relationship: "When your wife makes $100m during the course of your marriage, it's quite a shocker. I felt my masculinity has been stripped from me. I was no longer the big man in the relationship."

Legend has it that Tamara approached shoemaker Jimmy Choo with a business deal just over a decade ago, and the result is a brand which today is worth €210m.

The Towering World of Jimmy Choo: A Story of Power, Profits and the Pursuit of the Perfect Shoe, has just been published, and tells the story of how gifted bespoke shoemaker Jimmy Choo was persuaded to go into business with Tamara and her entrepreneurial father.

mastermind

It tracks the growth of the Jimmy Choo company, including how seasoned luxury goods executive Robert Bensoussan masterminded the brand's launch in America, to Jimmy Choos becoming the first shoe choice of international celebrities. Plus it records how the Jimmy Choo brand become a leading choice for investors, traditionally nervous of the world of luxury goods.

It charts the contentious relationship between Mellon and her father, who were visionary in their style of business management, and Jimmy Choo, a traditionalist from Malaysia who sought integrity in every piece of his footwork, and liked to have his simple workshop feng shuied for good harmony and atmosphere.

While it is glamour girl Tamara who is credited with convincing her celebrity friends that Jimmy Choo was the only shoe to be seen in at the Oscars or Ascot, it was her father who gave her the money to follow her dream

Yeardye is remembered as saying; "I spent a fortune buying shoes for Tamara and her mother. I would say, 'We got to get into this business someday'."

Jimmy Choo shoes are today available in Brown Thomas on Grafton Street and Harvey Nichols in the Dundrum Town Centre -- and indeed in 100 stores around the world.

The Towering World of Jimmy Choo: A Story of Power, Profits and the Pursuit of the Perfect Shoe, by Lauren Goldstein Crowe and Sagra Maceira de Rosen (Bloomsbury, €9.50 from Amazon)

- Anna Coogan