Carrie Bradshaw's Favourite Jimmy Choos, Revisited

The first five years of Jimmy Choo coincide with turn of the millennium style - what a time to be alive. A corsage flower on the toe, a chainmail thong sandal, nothing was too much. Shoppers today will spend hours searching re-sale sites for Carrie Bradshaw's outfits on Sex And The City to imitate the women, and the shoes, who defined an era of fashion we can't seem to get enough of. The Archive: 1997-2001 brings back eight unforgettable Jimmy Choo shoes for a limited edition capsule.

The Archive: 1997-2001 collection was selected by Jimmy Choo creative director Sandra Choi, with a little help from Conner Ives (this year's BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund recipient and Jimmy Choo collaborator) and Alexander Fury, journalist, curator and collector. The capsule looks back at the styles which propelled Jimmy Choo into a timeless household name. The Strappy (S/S 97), The Leo and “72138” (1998), for example, were immortalised by Sex and The City. The revisited designs, such as the “72138” made famous by Carrie when she shouts 'I lost my Choo!' in season 3, have never been reissued. The Archive: 1997-2001 gives new life to treasured icons like The Slide from 1999, The Bow, The Boot and The Thong (2000) and The Flower (2001). The collection is available to shop now complete with the brand's original 'winter bloom', burgundy lacquered packaging, as seen on Ms Bradshaw herself.

SHOWstudio caught up with Sandra, Connor and Alexander ahead of the launch.

What's your first memory of Jimmy Choo?

Conner Ives: When I was really young, there was a family friend - it must have been one of my mom's friends - and I remember complimenting her and saying 'I love the way your boots go with your skirt.' It's a famous story my parents will always tell, that that's when they knew I was going to be a fashion designer. The lore behind that story is that she was wearing Jimmy Choo boots.

Sandra Choi: There are so many firsts, because I first met Jimmy when I was about 11. He's married to my aunt, and we met in Hong Kong when he came to visit. Then, being in the workshop, making Jimmy Choo shoes, a pair of loafers in black go-grain. A memory of Jimmy Choo, the brand - the place I've been for many years - is when we were going to sell the collection in 1996 and standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue, thinking 'Wow, this is New York!', and about how we were going to move forward as a brand.

Alexander Fury: My first memory of Jimmy Choo is probably quite a geeky one. I've got a really photographic memory for fashion, especially fashion from when I was a teenager, and the first time I remember seeing Jimmy Choo was in the October 1996 issue of British Vogue - it was a pair of Jimmy Choo boots that were worn with a Chanel by Karl Lagerfeld skirt suit. I've spoken with Sandra Choi at Jimmy Choo about this, and she says it's actually the first credit for Jimmy Choo, it's technically from Jimmy Choo's S/S 97 collection but they gave Vogue a preview and let them shoot these boots for this editorial.

Sandra, why did you want to work with Conner and Alexander to curate the archive selection, what did they bring to the edit and design process?

SC: Having a discussion is key. I wanted to know what is important from a third person's point of view, I was really thinking about how to make this relevant. Alex is a friend, it was very natural for me to speak with him about the history of fashion and I think it's very important to reference what we created over the years along with what happened in the fashion world.

Connor, on the other hand, is someone I've grown to know. I love his ethos of where he is taking fashion, redesigning and reusing materials with his own thinking to create something new. I think that is where the future of fashion is.

What do these styles say about Jimmy Choo, then and now?

SC: They are very much treasured, and right for any time, they are definitely the backbone to the way we design and the way we think about what Jimmy Choo is. There was a consciousness in selecting the styles from the archive, thinking about what Jimmy Choo has become and trying to actually find and rewind to what we did before. Materials and fabrics back then were eclectic, whether it's an animal print or something decorative, like metal mesh.

From the beginning [of Jimmy Choo], there was this openness of designing something fun, that felt like the kind of shoes you want to get dressed in. The feeling is the same now: the capsule styles are light, feminine, novelty, they are really refined and they give you that lifting of the spirit. I think that is the ultimate feeling and reflection of Jimmy Choos then and now.

Why does this period, 1997-2001, remain so impactful in style today?

Connor Ives: We all herald the nineties as the last golden age of fashion. You were working on the brink of a world where you could still do novel things with clothing, you could still introduce new ideas and rehash older ones, but there was still such an appetite for fashion. There was money to be made, there was money to be had. It was prior to fashion being made into the spectacle that it is today. I wouldn't describe it as excess because I don't think anyone identified it as that, it almost felt like it was a means of living. This era remains so reliable as a reference because I think we would all desire to bring back that mood in fashion, and more than anything, it's a period of such timeless clothing that was merchandised in a way that you'd look at a python boot and say, 'Oh my god, I need that!' I don't think a python boot is a means for survival, but I love that we can think of it as a means for survival, or at least sometimes it's conveyed that way. I love a girl who's like, 'I need those boots to live!' I kind of feel the same way.

Alexander Fury: I think the late 90s, early 2000s period is a really interesting era of fashion to discuss. First of all, there are these kind, of macro socio-economic influences that really reshape fashion – most fundamentally, I think, is the kind of advent of the internet; it changing from a kind of geeky playground into something that the every person has access to, and simultaneously, the idea that fashion becomes part of that internet discourse, and all of a sudden, it's accessible in a way that it had never been before.

I also think there's this intersection between fashion and pop culture, which is part and parcel of the internet. But all of a sudden, you see programs like Sex and The City, where fashion is an integral part of that. And fashion in terms of brand names: it's very different, for instance, to Dynasty in the 1980s, which was about fashion and style, but certainly wasn't about designer brands, and that kind of conversation the way Sex and The City was.

There's also just the simple fact that it's an incredibly interesting period of fashion. There was a buildup towards the year 2000, and a degree of uncertainty. People didn't really know what was going to happen when we hit the year 2000. You know, there were all kinds of sort of doomsday theories around that, it led to some very interesting clothes. And then all of a sudden, when the world didn't end in the year 2000, it was kind of a massive party. That all changed again with September the 11th, and the socioeconomic impact that had around the globe, but I think the late '90s and very early 2000s is a period of incredibly exciting, innovative, experimental design, and a degree of kind of joyful optimism for a new era. I think that's something that people are drawn to again and again.

Connor, you and Jimmy Choo share a love for leopard print, seen in The Leo and your recent A/W 25 collaboration. Why does Jimmy Choo resonate with you as a designer?

Connor Ives: We have a shared muse, we're dressing the same girl. Two years ago, we initially approached Jimmy Choo to start working together on shoes, and it became second nature. We carry a lot of the same references and inspirations, I've felt so welcomed by Sandra into the Jimmy Choo world and universe, I'm like a kid in a candy shop.

What makes an archive design an iconic one?

Alexander Fury: I think the word iconic is really overused in sort of general fashion parlance today, but I think what makes an archive design become something iconic is a kind of longevity to it. In fact, it's a combination of two things: it's the idea of something being timely and of the moment in which it's created, but then also proving to be timeless and having that longevity, that ability to sort of transcend its moment. When you think of something like the Bar suit by Dior, you know it's archival fashion that somehow has managed to both kind of epitomise a particular point in time but also then to break free of its ramifications and become something with a sense of eternality. That's the difference between the two, between something that's mired in the point of its own creation and something that can become a kind of icon for a fashion house.