Fashion designer Kate Spade, 55, dead in apparent suicide
Kate Spade was found and pronounced dead in her Park Avenue apartment on Tuesday, the New York Police Department confirmed. The fashion designer was 55.
Law enforcement officials said it was an apparent suicide and that housekeeping staff found Spade hanging in the apartment at around 10:20 a.m. She left a note, and her husband was at the scene, police confirmed to The Washington Post.
Police added that the investigation is ongoing and had no further comment. A representative for Spade said she did not have a statement at this time.
Spade became synonymous with the popular fashion brand that bore her name. Together with soon-to-be-husband Andy Spade, she founded the Kate Spade label in 1993 as a collection of handbags and accessories. It eventually became known for its bold color palette and functional products, including stationery, beauty products and eyewear.
The first Kate Spade shop in New York opened in 1996. Three years later, the couple sold a large stake of Kate Spade to Neiman Marcus, which later acquired the remaining portion and sold it to Liz Claiborne in 2007. Both founders eventually left the brand, which is now a part of Tapestry, Inc., an accessible-luxury group that also owns Coach and Stuart Weitzman. There are more than 140 Kate Spade retail and outlet stores in the United States and more than 175 internationally.
“Kate Spade, the visionary founder of our brand, has passed,” reads a statement from the Kate Spade New York label. “Our thoughts are with her family at this incredibly heartbreaking time. We honor all the beauty she brought into this world.”
Spade was honored by the Council of Fashion Designers of America twice: as “America’s New Fashion Talent in Accessories” in 1996 and “Best Accessory Designer” in 1998. The CFDA tweeted Tuesday that the organization “is devastated to hear the news of our friend, colleague, and CFDA member Kate Spades’s (sic) tragic passing.”
The San Francisco Chronicle wrote in 2000 that the Kate Spade logo — the name written in serif font, now with a small spade — had “joined the status signature company of Gucci’s double-Gs, Chanel’s double-Cs and Louis Vuitton’s LVs.” Spade had told Forbes’ Michelle Conlin two years prior that the look came about on the eve of her first trade show, when she impulsively removed the “kate spade new york” labels from the inside of her handbags and stitched them onto the outside.
Spade’s overall vision was “to bring handbags back to what they had been in the 1950s and 1960s — elegant, classic and unpretentious complements to outfits, not bauble-festooned statements about their owner’s affluence la Prada and Chanel,” Conlin wrote.
Born Katherine Brosnahan in Kansas City, Missouri, Spade graduated from Arizona State University in 1985 with a degree in journalism. She told The New York Times in 1999 that she wanted to be “behind the scenes, like in that movie ‘Broadcast News.’ Holly Hunter — her I wanted to be.” Spade landed a job at Conde Nast in New York City as an assistant and eventually worked her way up to senior fashion editor at Mademoiselle, dealing with accessories for fashion shoots.
Spade was an emeritus chair of the New York Center for Children, an organization that advocates for and helps treat victims of child abuse. She became more involved in philanthropy work after leaving her brand in 2007.
In 2016, the Spades launched a luxury handbag and footwear brand called Frances Valentine. Spade changed her name to Kate Valentine Spade that year.
Spade is survived by her husband and daughter.