This has nothing to do with you. Don’t feel guilty. Ask Daddy’
That’s the haunting note reportedly left by fashion designer Kate Spade for her 13-year-old daughter. So was she blaming her husband for her suicide?
Kate Spade was a woman whose colourful creations had been adored, lusted after, carried and worn by millions of women worldwide, her happy family life seemingly reflecting the upbeat tone of her designs. So fans and fashion insiders were stunned when it was reported the 55-year- old designer had been found hanged in her bedroom on tuesday morning. police said she was discovered by a housekeeper at her park avenue home in uptown Manhattan just after 10am. an autopsy is expected to reveal when she died.
It was left to her husband, andy Spade, with whom she had turned a shared idea about simple but stylish handbags into a billion-dollar brand, to break the awful news to their 13-year- old daughter, Frances Beatrix Spade, at school.
Spade had left a note for her daughter. ‘Bea — I have always loved you. this has nothing to do with you,’ she reportedly wrote. ‘don’t feel guilty. ask daddy!’
It was a sign- off that appeared somewhat brutal and cold-blooded yesterday as it emerged that Spade had sunk into a deep depression because her husband was demanding a divorce.
Was her note blaming him for her suicide? the couple had reportedly been living separate lives for months and, after 24 years of marriage, he had moved into an apartment nearby. However, the truth of what drove her to commit suicide may prove more complex.
their partnership had produced one of the most remarkable fashion industry success stories of recent decades, beginning with accessories but then branching into clothing, shoes, jewellery and homeware.
With her trademark handbags — unveiled in 1993 — and later with her dresses, Spade pulled off that rare feat of creating a brand that was immensely popular with celebrities and yet not so expensive that it was beyond the reach of ordinary women. acquiring her famous logo — the spade from a pack of cards — was aspirational but still accessible. Many stars went online yesterday to recall how a Spade bag had been their first designer accessory.
the duchess of Cambridge, pippa Middleton, Michelle Obama, Gwyneth paltrow and taylor Swift have all worn Spade dresses and jewellery or clutched Spade handbags. ‘there was a moment when you couldn’t walk a block in New York without seeing one of her bags,’ said Vogue’s queen anna Wintour, another Spade fan.
Her
success — more spectacular in the U.S. than in the UK where there are seven stores — made her very famous and very wealthy but it also made her deeply unhappy, according to her elder sister in a series of statements.
Stressing that the suicide had come as no surprise to her, at least, reta Saffo has claimed that Spade had long struggled to cope with an enormous success which only accentuated her problems with undiagnosed manic depression (or bipolar disorder).
Miss Saffo’s account hasn’t gone unchallenged by other family members, however.
Within hours, a source told people magazine the two sisters had long been estranged, adding: ‘ the family is disgusted and saddened that at this time of great sorrow, Kate’s sister, who has been estranged from the entire family for more than ten years, would choose to surface with unsubstantiated comments.’
the source added: ‘ Her statements paint a picture of someone who didn’t know her at all.’
Miss Saffo wasn’t the only one to say that Kate Spade had been struggling to hold it all together. according to the website tMZ, her husband told police investigators his wife had been drinking heavily, and that she was depressed over their separation and her business problems.
and the revelations that a designer associated with sunny cheerfulness, bright colours and sweet, lively designs (‘You couldn’t walk into her boutiques and not smile’, said the actress Mindy Kaling) was hiding a very dark side
IN NEW YORK to her life has shocked fans and fellow fashion industry figures.
Fern Mallis, the creator of New York Fashion Week and friend of Spade for 30 years, described her as ‘ the last person on earth you’d think would take her own life’. She added: ‘She and andy, they were a team. I mean they were adorable together.’
Spade’s family said in a statement: ‘We are all devastated . . . we loved Kate dearly and will miss her terribly.’
their reticence is in contrast to Miss Saffo, who said her sister had been suffering a ‘debilitating’ mental illness for three or four years and was ‘self-medicating’ with alcohol, terrified of the consequences for her business if she sought medical help and word got out about her fragile state.
Her suicide ‘was unexpected by me’, she emailed the family’s hometown newspaper the Kansas City Star. ‘She was always a very excitable little girl, and I felt all the stress/pressure of her brand may have flipped the switch where she eventually became full- on manic depressive.’
She also suggested that the circumstances surrounding her sister’s untimely end were rather more complicated than simply the break-up of her marriage.
according to Miss Saffo, both she and Mr Spade had repeatedly urged the designer to get medical help for managing her bipolar disorder.
In the end, however, she had refused — for the good of her business.
With her Sixties-style beehive hairdos and clothes, Spade’s personal image reflected that of her brightly hued bags and fabrics. It was this image, says her sister, that she was terrified would be ruined if word got out that she was being treated for depression. ‘My little sister Katy was a precious, precious little person. Genuine in almost every way,’ said Miss Saffo, 57. ‘But she was surrounded by “Yes” people for far too long, therefore she did not receive the proper care for what I believed to be (and tried numerous times to get help for) bipolar disorder . . . stemming from her immense celebrity.’ She said her sister never expected — ‘nor was she properly prepared’ — to become a household name. ‘Unfortunately, untreated, it finally took its toll on her,’ she said of the designer’s mental illness. ‘a tragic and sad ending to the life of a very colourful and delightful being.’ Miss Saffo recalled being with her sister in a hotel near her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when the news broke
that the actor Robin Williams had hanged himself in 2014.
Spade couldn’t tear herself away from news reports about the tragedy, watching them over and over again. ‘I think the plan was already in motion as far back as then.’
She recalled that one of the last things her sister said to her was to ask her to come to her funeral. ‘Reta, I know you hate funerals and don’t attend them, but for me would you please come to mine, at least. Please!’ Miss Saffo recalled. ‘I know she perhaps had a plan but she insisted she did not.’
The grieving sibling said that she and Andy Spade had become increasingly worried and, among treatment options, had suggested the designer visit the same facility that helped the actress Catherine Zeta- Jones with her own bipolar disorder.
Miss Saffo said that over the past three or four years she had flown several times to Spade’s homes in New York and Napa, California, to urge her to get treatment. They would get ‘so close to packing her bags but — in the end, the “image” of her brand was more important for her to keep up,’ she told the Kansas City Star. ‘She was definitely worried what people would say if they found out.’
On one occasion, staff from the facility that treated Zeta- Jones offered to fly to New York to collect Spade, said her sister. ‘She was all set to go — but then chickened out by the morning,’ she added.
Miss Saffo eventually gave up, explaining: ‘ Sometimes you simply cannot save people from themselves!’
In the upper reaches of the fashion world Spade, sadly, is by no means alone in deciding to end a glittering career by suicide. The British stylist Isabella Blow took her life in 2007, followed three years later by the designer Alexander McQueen, who hanged himself.
And in 2014, L’Wren Scott, another designer and also famous as Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, hanged herself in her Manhattan flat. It later emerged that, beneath the image she carefully crafted of having a perfect life, she was heavily in debt, had few close friends and was reportedly no longer in a relationship with Jagger.
ReTASaffo’s account of her sister’s terror at being similarly exposed as having a less than perfect existence has prompted some observers to decry the brutality of the fashion world — where rivalry is vicious and image is everything.
Just last year, the American designer Tom Ford claimed that ‘fashion is evil . . . you stay out for very long and people forget who you are’.
Born Katherine Brosnahan in Kansas City, Missouri, and one of five sisters, Kate Spade had wanted to be a TV journalist but switched to fashion journalism after temping at a magazine. She met Andy Spade when they both worked as sales staff in a men’s clothing store in Phoenix, Arizona.
They bonded over their love of fashion and Spade determined to have a go herself after deciding there was a huge gap in the market for simple, sensible and stylish — but not too cutting edge — highquality handbags. She sketched out designs on huge sheets of white butcher’s paper.
In 1993, they launched their brand, Kate Spade New York, marrying the following year. The company was a runaway success, the boxy, retro-looking bags rapidly being seen on the arms of the stars, and had notched up $28 million in sales within five years.
The Spades sold the majority of their company to the fashion giant Neiman Marcus in 1999 for nearly $34 million and the remainder in 2006 for another $59 million. (The company they set up was sold to Coach last year for $2.4 billion.)
Spade stepped back from the business in 2007 after the birth of their only child, Frances. ‘I took off a good nine years raising my daughter and absolutely adored every moment of it,’ said Spade. ‘But then I realised that she was becoming 12 and really didn’t want me around so much, so I thought I’d get back into the business.’
In 2016, the Spades plunged back into fashion and launched a new brand of luxury bags and shoes called Frances Valentine.
Spade’s death has provided yet another salient reminder about depression and how it can lurk in the most unlikely places. Spade was famous for projecting an aura of breezy cheerfulness in interviews. She was invariably smiling in photographs and often holding hands with her husband.
Spade’s niece, the actress Rachel Brosnahan, star of hit TV series House Of Cards, remembered her as ‘effervescent’, ‘exceedingly kind’ and ‘beautifully sensitive . . . Knowing Katy, this is how she would want to be remembered’.
Sadly, her decision to take h e r own life means that is rather unlikely.
For confidential support, call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit a local branch. See samaritans.org for details.