After launching her new Madison Avenue shop this fall, Tamara Mellon, who owns and runs—and designs for—Jimmy Choo, was intrigued to see that the first miles-long wait-list was not for spindly stilettos with rhinestone brooch clasps. It was for the Tulita hobo bags,which were flying off the shelves as if their roomy innards were filled with helium (and as if they didn’t cost $980). “I definitely,” she says softly, while perched on one of the store’s lavender settees, “did not anticipate the demand.” Which is why, when the resort collection arrives this week—same bags, brighter colors!—crowd control may be necessary. Mellon’s shoe fetish started early. “When I was 4 years old, I went on a trip with my convent school to Paris,” says the native Londoner. “And I begged the nuns to buy me some cowboy shoes I saw in a window. They were terrified of my parents, so I convinced them.” The thing for bags came later, in her twenties, when she was accessories editor at British Vogue. “You can really tell so much about a girl from her shoes and her bags,” she says, leaning over conspiratorially. “Can’t you?”