KATE HUBBY'S MASK-ERADE
Odd disguise for mourner
Kate Spade’s husband looked more like a trick-or-treater than a grieving widower as he emerged from his Upper East Side building Thursday in a mouse mask from a ’70s cartoon movie.
Andy Spade threw on the bizarre disguise and left his Park Avenue home just after 8:30 a.m., two days after his wife, Kate, was found dead in their nearby marital apartment.
The mask depicts the Disney character Bernard, the hero of the studio’s 1977 animated film, “The Rescuers,” voiced by Bob Newhart.
Spade, 55, also wearing a buttoned-up jean jacket, slowly walked to a waiting black Chevy Suburban while holding a coffee mug in his hand and a green notebook under his arm.
Spade — who co-founded Kate Spade New York with his wife and is the brother of the comedian David Spade — declined to answer questions, but a day earlier, he released a statement confirming he and his wife were living separately but denying they were divorcing. The statement denied reports Kate abused alcohol.
Thursday’s masquerade was a prelude to a parade of family and friends that visited the apartment, where Andy has lived since separating from Kate about 10 months ago.
Kate’s niece Rachel Brosnahan, star of Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” came and went with Kate’s publicist pal and selfdescribed “queen of kale” Oberon Sinclair. Judy Spade, mother to Andy and David, was also on hand, as were Kate’s business partner Elyce Arons, and Bella Cariaga, the housekeeper who discovered her “best friend” Kate’s body on Tuesday. The 55-year-old handbag maven was found hanged by a red scarf attached to a doorknob in her apartment. She had left a note for her daughter, Frances Beatrix Valentine, 13, telling her the death was not her fault. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled the death a suicide by hanging on Thursday. Kate’s dad, Earl F. Brosnahan II, told The Post Thursday that family members had been concerned about her meds. “I don’t know what pills they were. I just know her siblings were concerned with consumption, with too much medication,” he said. “Of course, they weren’t [working]. Among the family, we discussed things. I had been led to be concerned and I was.” The ME’s office declined to say whether it would perform toxicology testing on Kate. Her former publicist Rob Shuter told NBC’s “Extra” that the fashion icon had “disappeared” from the city social scene in recent years. “Kate was really isolated and lonely,” he said. “Toward the end of her life, she had a housekeeper, she had her assistant, and her child, and I think that was pretty much it. Kate didn’t have many friends.”