FORWARD THINKING Meet Nicola Glass, the Belfast designer reimagining the world of Kate Spade New York
Kate Spade’s Belfast-born designer Nicola Glass is updating the brand’s aesthetic with her debut collection
Don’t let appearances fool you. With her white-blonde bob and slick of black eyeliner, lyrical Belfast accent and warm demeanour, 46-year-old Nicola Glass seems – on first impression – to be anything but intimidating. A quick look around her Manhattan office confirms this: from the walls painted in powder pink to the shaggy lilac rug beneath her desk, which perfectly matches her suede platform sandals, it’s all friendly, super-feminine and fashionable without trying too hard. A little longer in the office and you realise that could sum up Glass herself. It comes as something of a shock, then, to realise that the unassuming designer – whose CV includes stints at Gucci under Tom Ford and as senior vice-president of accessories at Michael Kors – is now in total creative charge of the billion-dollar Kate Spade New York label, a role she took up in the spring of 2018. Her debut collection, which was presented on the runway at New York Fashion Week in September, is about to land in store now. In the interim, she has been busy repositioning the much-loved American household name – known for its bright, quirky charm – into a much chicer proposition.
‘The brand has had a strong DNA throughout its 25-year history,’ acknowledges Glass. ‘It’s about a powerful use of colour and print – their woman is spirited and individual, which was very appealing to me. I felt things had become a little too retro, though, and that there was a way to modernise it all.’
The company’s founder Kate Spade died tragically last June, more than a decade after she had sold up and moved on, but Glass acknowledged her lasting influence with a thin trail of glitter along the catwalk and a card on each seat reading: ‘She left a little sparkle everywhere she went.’ This sense of playfulness is key: affordable luxury is a tricky space to navigate, though Glass has succeeded in making everything seem much more elevated than it is, with the newly refined bags coming in at around £400. The key piece is named Nicola: an elegantly streamlined shoulder bag with a spade-shape clasp, which she has reworked as a graphic signature. The clothes feel similarly fresh – breezy silk dresses with puffy little sleeves, rows of tiny buttons and a youthful appeal. It’s hard not to be won over. ‘A sense of polished ease was important,’ Glass says. ‘There was a purity to the design approach when Kate Spade started the brand, which I liked. But really, you want to come in and push things forward.’