For Kate Spade, it all started and ended in New York. It was 1991 when she and boyfriend-turned-husband Andy dreamed up the idea…
For Kate Spade, it all started and ended in New York.
It was 1991 when she and boyfriend-turned-husband Andy dreamed up the idea of starting their own handbag company over dinner at a Mexican restaurant.
“He just said, ‘What about handbags?’ And I said, ‘Honey, you just don’t start a handbag company.’ And he said, ‘Why not? How hard can it be?’ ” Kate recalled in one of her final interviews. “I thought, OK, really? He regrets those words.”
The college sweethearts scrounged up what little savings they had and, two years later, launched Kate Spade — now one of the most recognizable names in handbags.
The couple, who married in 1994, built a multimillion-dollar empire with the label before fully off-loading it in 2006.
They enjoyed 24 years of what appeared to be a picture-perfect marriage before Kate hanged herself Tuesday inside their Park Avenue apartment .
Kate was born Katherine Brosnahan in Kansas City, Mo., on Christmas Eve 1962.
Her father, Earl, owned a construction company there that built roads and bridges, while her mom, June, looked after Kate and her five siblings.
Kate, who attended an all-girls Catholic school while growing up, loved rifling through her mom’s jewelry box but never envisioned a career in fashion.
Instead, she thought of becoming a TV producer.
“I loved fashion, I really did,” she told The New York Times in 1999, “but I was not obsessed with it. I wanted to be behind the scenes, like in that movie ‘Broadcast News.’ Holly Hunter — her I wanted to be.’’
Kate studied journalism at Arizona State University and earned money working at a motorcycle bar and clothing shop, where she met and fell in love with classmate Andy.
After graduating in 1985, Kate took off backpacking around Europe by herself while Andy finished school.
Eventually, she wound up in New York — broke and with every intention of returning to Arizona to be with Andy.
Only that never happened.
Kate kicked off her career by landing a job as a fashion assistant at Mademoiselle magazine, where she ironed clothes and carried garment bags for $14,000 a year, she recalled in a February 2017 interview with NPR’s “How I Built This.”
“I kept saying, ‘Oh, I’m coming back. I will only stay here for six months,’ ” she said. “Well, first of all, it was three months. Then I moved it to six. And then finally I said, I have to be honest, I kind of like my job. I loved it. And I loved, you know, the fast pace of New York. And suddenly it just — I loved it.”
Andy, who was working as a copywriter, finally moved to the Big Apple and the two lived in an apartment at 26 Renwick St. in Tribeca.
All the while, Kate rose through the ranks at Mademoiselle as an accessories editor and then senior fashion editor in the late 1980s and early ’90s.
But one night, over their Mexican meal in 1991, it dawned on Kate that she no longer saw herself at the glossy magazine.
That’s when Andy floated the idea of designing handbags, which got her thinking. She decided to quit and immediately began drafting ideas for what would become Kate Spade’s signature style — easy, classic and accessible. “At the time . bags were too complicated. And I really loved very simple kind of architectural shapes,” she explained to NPR. “And I would wear these very simple shapes, none of which were famous designers. And I thought, gosh, I mean, why can’t we find something just clean and simple and modern?”
Using $35,000 of Andy’s retirement savings, the couple embarked on their journey to create the perfect purse under the name Kate Spade New York, a mash-up of the husband-and-wife’s names.
Kate, having no experience in fashion design, used white paper and Scotch tape to mold her creations. Her first materials were also unsophisticated — she found a potato-sack maker in the Yellow Pages who sold her the burlap that was used on one of the first six bags she designed.
The modest collection was sold at trade shows and picked up by Fred Segal in Los Angeles and Barneys.
From there, business started taking off, although the couple kept their handbag venture a secret from their relatives.
“We intentionally didn’t really talk about it much to family because I think secretly, we both thought it would fail,” Andy explained in the NPR interview.
Kate’s mom, meanwhile, was livid over the company name.
“Honestly, she burst into flames. And she was like, but you’re not Kate Spade,” Kate remembered. She said she explained to her mom, “Well, it’s my first name, his last name, and it’s like Dolce & Gabbana. And she goes, ‘Who the hell is that?’ ”
Realizing they needed help for their burgeoning brand, the couple added pals Elyce Arons and Pamela Bell to their lineup.
Together, the quartet used their own funds to keep the company going. It wasn’t until Kate Spade won its first of two Council of Fashion Designers of America awards in 1996 that the firm started gaining status in the fashion realm. Kate called it a “snowball effect.”
“I think at the point where the larger department stores were picking us up, I think then we realized — I think we have a business here,” she said. “We loved it.”
The first Kate Spade shop opened in Soho that same year. Two years later, the company was raking in $28 million in sales annually.
By 1999, Kate Spade was beloved for its collection of boxy nylon totes that had a look of luxury without the hefty price tag. Its menswear offshoot, Jack Spade, was also launched that year.
That year, the couple off sold the bulk of their stake in the company — 56 percent — to Neiman Marcus for close to $34 million.
The label exploded with an expansion into other goods, including diaper bags, flight-attendant uniforms and pricey coffee-table books, according to the Times. A lower-priced line, Kate Spade Saturday, hit the market in 2013.
They off-loaded the rest of their share in the company in 2006 to Neiman Marcus, which then sold it for $124 million to Liz Claiborne.
At the time, Kate Spade, with its fun, bold colors and whimsical designs, was generating more than $80 million a year in revenue.
The couple’s decision to give up their company was made after the birth of their daughter, Frances Beatrix, in 2005.
“I just remember thinking it was a perfect opportunity,” Kate told NPR. “I remember thinking, I want to leave on good terms. It was a perfect time to leave. I wanted to spend time with my daughter.”
More than 30 Kate Spade Saturday and Jack Spade stores were shuttered in 2015.
But the Spades didn’t stay away from fashion for very long.
In 2016, they launched Frances Valentine, a brand-new line named in part for their daughter, which sells leather handbags, shoes and cutesy accessories, such as wine bags.
