Fashion designer whose name became a byword for style
Kate Brosnahan was working at Condé Nast’s Mademoiselle magazine in Manhattan in the 1980s when – as accessories editor – she became exasperated by the choice of handbags on the market, said The Guardian. They were all too complicated, overdesigned and rarely practical; she wanted one that was simple, sophisticated and functional – so she set about designing her own. She created prototypes from paper and sticky tape, sourced materials and found a manufacturer; then with her boyfriend (and later husband) Andy Spade she formed a company. They called it Kate Spade. In 1993, she hired a small stand in a distant corner of a large trade show, and to her surprise a buyer from the high-end retailer Barneys put in an order. The night before the show, she’d decided the bags needed something to make them more eye-catching – and had come up with the idea of taking the Kate Spade logo from inside the bag and sewing it to the outside, thus creating an instantly recognisable name brand. By the late 1990s, Kate Spade had become a byword for American style, and a global business generating $28m in revenue.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1962, Spade, who has died aged 55, was the fifth child in a family of six. Her father worked in construction; her mother had been a flight attendant. She didn’t grow up steeped in fashion: her first ambition was to be a TV producer. At college in Arizona in the early 1980s, she studied journalism and met Andy Spade while working in a shop. After graduating, they moved to New York. At Mademoiselle, she was known for her lively spirit and sense of fun: in the early days of Kate Spade, her journalist colleagues helped pack up the hundreds of boxes of bags stacked up in her tiny flat, ready for shipping.
They proved an almost instant hit, and the first Kate Spade shop opened in New York in 1996; three years later, Neiman Marcus bought 56% of the firm for $30m, said The New York Times, and it started producing everything from homeware to shoes and jeans, all in a sharp, upbeat, preppy style that straddled the “thin line between accessibility and luxury”. In 2007, the Spades sold their remaining stake in the firm to Liz Claiborne, and Spade – having lost the rights to her name – retreated from the fashion world to raise her daughter, Frances. A decade later, she returned with a new accessories brand, Frances Valentine.
Kate Spade sometimes intimated that she found happiness elusive. Her husband revealed last week that she had suffered from depression and anxiety for years. However, he said that her death – an apparent suicide – had come as a complete shock nevertheless. He and Frances, 13, survive her.