(FORTUNE Magazine) – BEYONCé SINGS ABOUT THEM, THE SEX and the City set lived in them--now investors may get a piece of them. Jimmy Choo, the London shoemaker famous for its high heels with even higher pricetags, has hired bankers at Rothschild to look into a sale or public offering of the 27-store shoe chain.

Jimmy Choo, which is owned by socialite Tamara Mellon, her father Tommy Yeardye, co-founder of the Vidal Sassoon hair-care company, and private-equity firm Equinox Luxury Holdings, was approached by a couple of potential buyers last summer (the company won't say who). That's about a year after Mellon, 35, made headlines in the gossip columns for her steamy affair with a 22-year-old while her marriage to oil and banking heir Matthew Mellon II was said to be on the rocks. Tamara Mellon declined to comment, but British papers have speculated that a divorce is in the works.

Just as Mellon's personal intrigues have generated headlines, so have her shoes. She launched the chain in 1996 when she went into business with the original Jimmy Choo, a Malaysian shoemaker, and developed a ready-to-wear line in collaboration with his niece. The real Choo left the business in 2001. (He in fact has to license his name from Mellon's firm for his Jimmy Choo Couture brand, which is sold in London.)

Unlike Choo's main competitor, Manolo Blahnik, whose shoes are still designed by the company's founder and which distributes mainly through small boutiques and department stores, Mellon has aggressively expanded, pushing sales up by 50% a year in the past three years through store expansion and diversification into handbags. Sales in 2004 are expected to reach $73 million. Choo "is just a brand name with a company behind it," scoffs a Manolo spokeswoman.

Analysts say selling to a buyer such as LVMH or Burberry or Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, which owns Gucci, makes more sense than an IPO. Public shareholders would undoubtedly pressure the firm to continue its rapid expansion, which could eventually cheapen the brand. Moreover, Choo has less growth potential than it did a few years ago when Sex and the City was in the mainstream and luxury goods were red-hot. "They are trying to expand in a tougher market," says Paola Durante, a luxury-goods analyst with Merrill Lynch in Milan. Indeed, a Choo spokesman says sales growth is projected to slow to from 50% to 15% a year over the next three years, with sales reaching $110 million in 2007 after planned store expansion in Asia.

Future investors may have missed the '90s stiletto craze, but an outright sale would result in a tidy gain for Mellon and Equinox. Mellon financed her stake in 1996 with a $225,000 loan from her wealthy father, and Equinox bought out the original Jimmy Choo's 51% stake for $30 million in 2001. Now bankers put the total value of the company at $180 million. Guess you can put a pricetag on somebody's sole. -- Janet Guyon