A London-headquartered luxury shoe and accessories house, founded in 1996, which grew out of Jimmy Choo's handmade shoe workshop in London's East End.
Jimmy Choo is a luxury fashion house that designs shoes, handbags, accessories, eyewear and fragrances. It started with bespoke shoes made by hand and grew into a global brand with over 200 boutiques worldwide. Its own history page describes its values as craftsmanship, innovative design, playful glamour and modern culture, and says its products are meant to inspire confidence and joy.
In the late 1980s, Professor Jimmy Choo, a shoemaker, set up a workshop in London's East End making handmade shoes. Tamara Mellon, then an accessories editor at British Vogue, often asked him to customise shoes. In 1996 the two founded J. Choo Limited to make ready-to-wear luxury shoes. Sandra Choi, Jimmy's niece by marriage, joined in 1989 and has led design since, becoming creative director and, in 2026, receiving an OBE for services to fashion. The company says Princess Diana was a customer. Jimmy Choo left the company in 2001 and later began a separate couture line. Hannah Colman has been chief executive since 2020.
The brand is headquartered in London and its collections are designed in a London studio. The first shop opened on Motcomb Street in 1996 and later moved to Draycott Avenue; further boutiques followed on Bond Street and Sloane Street. Most of its products are now made in Italy. It bought a factory in Florence in 2019 and another in 2024, and opened a supply-chain office in Scandicci in 2025. Wikipedia reports 1,278 employees in 2016, a dated figure.
The company's own page says it was built on traditional craft and wants to preserve those skills through its Florence factories. It runs The Jimmy Choo Foundation, set up in 2011, which supports women through education and entrepreneurship, and has a partnership with Women for Women International. The brand's story has also been shaped by fashion media, including the TV series Sex and the City, which made it famous worldwide in the 2000s. Many of the people who built it, including Sandra Choi and Hannah Colman, have spent decades at the company, which suggests a settled team, although that is our inference.
Behind the shoes are many jobs in London: designers and design assistants, pattern and product developers, merchandisers and buyers, retail teams in the boutiques, planners working with the Italian factories, and people in marketing, communications, finance, legal and human resources. If you like detailed, hands-on product work and a creative environment, it is worth looking at. Current roles are listed on the company's website.
Website: www.jimmychoo.com
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