Kate Spade, who launched £2bn fashion empire, found dead at 55
FASHION designer Kate Spade, who launched a £1.8 billion clothing and accessories empire, has been found dead in her Manhattan home in a suspected suicide.
Spade, 55, was discovered in her Park Avenue home yesterday morning by her housekeeper.
She had reportedly left a note telling her 13-year-old daughter, Frances Beatrix, it was not her fault.
She leaves behind a design legacy that included 140 retail shops and outlet stores and more than 175 stores internationally, in addition to the iconic handbags that launched her career.
Named Glamour magazine’s woman of the year in 2002, she said at the time: “I hope that people remember me not just as a good businesswoman but as a great friend – and a heck of a lot of fun.”
The designer was married to Andy, a marketing executive, with whom she co-founded her eponymous handbag and accessories brand.
Ivanka Trump, who founded her own fashion line, tweeted her condolences, saying Spade’s death is “a painful reminder that we never truly know another’s pain or the burden they carry”.
Diane von Furstenberg, chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and Steve Kolb, the organisation’s president, released a joint statement, saying they were “devastated”.
Chelsea Clinton also tweeted her condolences, saying she remembered her grandmother giving her her first Kate Spade bag.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Spade graduated in 1985 with a journalism degree from Arizona State University and then backpacked around Europe.
The next year, she moved to New York and worked as a temp before finding a job at Condé Nast in the accessories department at Mademoiselle magazine. She rose to become its accessories director.
But she said she struggled to find handbags she liked, and in 1993 quit journalism to start her own brand, taking inspiration from her mother’s collection of bags, stored in Kansas City. “She had clutches, oranges, pinks, chocolates, huge pearl buttons,” she told TIME.
At her first trade show, she returned in floods of tears because she had not recouped the cost of the stand. “I said, ‘I think we should shut it down’,” she recalled.
“I’m very conservative. And I said, ‘I have no interest in losing money’.”
In 1997, she launched a men’s line designed by her husband, called Jack Spade, and by 1998, annual revenues had reached £20 million.
Two years later the Spades sold 56 per of their business to Neiman Marcus for £25million, selling the remaining shares to the company in 2005 for a reported £44million.
She went on to found a second label, Frances Valentine, specialising in Italian accessories.
She spoke about the joys of running her own business, and making sure every evening to eat dinner with her husband and daughter.
“My life is a little kooky but a lot of fun,” she said.
The New York Police Department confirmed her death under her birth name, Katherine Noel Brosnahan.