Abodes in Bangkok don’t come much more uplifting than a penthouse suite at the city’s Peninsula Hotel. Perched proudly at the crown of the property, the plush furnishings in the duplex unit exude a comfortable, slightly old-school, sense of luxe grandeur.
An outdoor terrace with a jacuzzi and widescreen views of the mighty Chao Phraya River and the city’s space-age skyline would put a spring in anyone’s step. And CNA Luxury was getting insight into the room’s restorative qualities as Jimmy Choo greets us. Our encounter with the legendary shoe designer has been delayed, affording the 73-year-old some time to rest between appointments.
But the doyen of handmade women’s footwear shows no fatigue when he rises for our introductions. Resplendent in a blue tailored suit and a shiny pair of black leather slip-ons – self-designed naturally – he bounces nimbly across the room.
He guides us to the window-side table where we will conduct our chat and regales us with a stream of anecdotes along the way.
Topics range from a Scottish single malt sampling session with footballer David Beckham to his distaste for the English “delicacy” of jellied eels – an aversion he nurtured as a gastronomy-deprived Penangite Chinese stranded in East London in the late 1970s.
“I got my formal education as a designer at Cordwainers Technical College in Hackney,” he recalled. “There wasn’t a lot of good Chinese food in that part of London at the time, and that was a big deal for me. I couldn’t get used to how people talked, and it took me ages to find a good place for Singapore fried rice!”
The vagaries of the British diet aside, Choo’s decision to plump for London as a base over other fashion capitals such as Milan, Paris and New York didn’t turn out too badly. His diamante-encrusted journey from Georgetown, Penang, to one-man backstreet atelier, to a shoemaker to stars and royalty is the stuff of fashion fantasy.
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