June 13, 2018

How Kate Spade stores are presenting the suicide of their namesake.

DSC05451

That's my photo of the shop window at Hilldale, here in Madison.

(This isn't meant as an open thread. The next post will be one.)

46 comments:

Sprezzatura said...

Holy F, is that nerd-mobile Althouse's E-bike?

I imagined something less lame. She said it was a Trek (as if we didn't know re a cheese head), I assumed they built the more normal style E-bikes.

I'm sure that's some random bike that was incidentally captured in the pic. Not Trek.


BTW this weekend folks can combine the good old naked days w/ bikes:

http://fremontfair.com/

Ann Althouse said...

"Holy F, is that nerd-mobile Althouse's E-bike?"

No.

Ann Althouse said...

You can easily find pictures of my ebike on the blog. Here: https://althouse.blogspot.com/2018/02/e-bike.html

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

She left behind a 13 year old daughter. She's kind of a loser.

Sprezzatura said...

Don't lawyers ask questions only when they already know the answers?

Not just lawyers.

Michael said...

I hate the expression "passed". People die .

Sprezzatura said...

"I hate the expression "passed". People die ."

People also make love, F, and have sex.

Find more important things to fuss about.

IMHO.

Sprezzatura said...

BTW,

I bought a couple Trek E-bikes as gifts because of this blog.

And, a TT.

Not available via the portal.

readering said...

Imagine many of her fans made pilgrimage to a nearby store. Three in my area.

madAsHell said...

She left behind a 13 year old daughter.

I went to the doctor because he wanted to touch my prostate gland. But, what was really interesting was all the questions about suicide. Both the nurse with the blog pressure cuff, and the doctor asked about my mental health. Last year, they didn't ask these questions.

I abhor starting a sentence with a conjunction, but it seemed so context relevant!!

n.n said...

She may have brought beauty into the world, but her world was catastrophically bland, to the point of Choosing self-abortion, not merely Nature's passing.

MikeD said...

For f'n, Jesus sake, she made purses & accessories the elite bought. The shop window sign shud've read, "thanks for allowing us to sell your 500% markup items so we can afford to virtue signal when you die!"

mccullough said...

“Our brand”?

The Company must have hired some douchebag consultant to come up with this argle-bargle.

madAsHell said...

She left behind a 13 year old daughter.

At some point, you have to realize that it's no longer about you.

traditionalguy said...

I thought she had sold her business for Billions. And then she suddenly became another one of the epidmic of Hillary friends self choking themselves to death on a scarf tied to at waist level to a door knob.

readering said...

Sold it for tens of millions. Then resold for billions.

stevew said...

"has passed"

-sw

mccullough said...

She sold her company 20 years ago but she and her husband also stayed involved in the company. Made sense since she was the brand given how young she was. I’m sure she charged The Company through the nose to stay involved and stick her name on more shit.

The brand has taken a big hit now. It’s The Suicide Brand now.

Birches said...

I was going to purchase a Kate Spade purse when I stopped carrying a diaper bag. It doesn't feel right now though. I feel like the purse makes a statement I don't want to send. Too bad. I'll have to find something else now. Baby Girl would already be potty trained but I am the one delaying. The three year old is still prone to accidents. I don't want to deal with two children peeing their pants.

mccullough said...

The Company’s “thoughts” are with the family but they are keeping their payers for The Company

mccullough said...

“Prayers” not “payers.”

I like how the note to customers evokes the look of a Suicide Note. Genius.

Sprezzatura said...

"I was going to purchase a Kate Spade purse....."

Rather than fussing about suicide, how about passing on such a bag because it's made in China or Indonesia or some other lame factory? Buying these things means that you are labeling yourself as a sucker re the marketing folks in NYT and such.

I truly don't get why folks don't understand that they are embarrassing themselves w/ these "brands."

Althouse, jabbered about such re owning a Kate stash. Many people do the same re Kate and the rest.

Even at higher levels: F the Arnaults and the Pinaults and etc.

IMHO.




Henry said...

That is beautiful typography

William said...

Bourdain clearly overshadows her as the most perverse suicide of the year. There's a guy with a job and a metabolism most people would die for and yet he kills himself. She designed upbeat handbags. That's a little perverse, but it's not in Bourdain's league. I myself would be extremely depressed if I had to sit around and design handbags all day. If I could travel around the world and eat great meals everywhere, I think I would have a more positive attitude about life.

Mark said...

"We honor all the beauty she brought into this world."

Bill Cosby brought a lot of beauty into this world. So did Harvey Weinstein and lots of other people that are now vilified. Some beauty does not negate the evil that one does.

When your last act in life is an act of murder - the evil of taking a human life -- then that ugliness cannot be ignored regardless of what beauty she might otherwise have brought too. Killing is no less evil just because the person killed is yourself -- and, in fact, such killing is likely not limited to yourself, but often leads to others being self-killed as well by that evil example.

readering said...

Pretty cold-blooded crew here.

readering said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim in vermont said...

I just drove 1,00 miles, in June, the length of the East Coast, and until I got to the Adirondacks, there were hardly any bugs on the windshield. Maybe I am remembering wrong, but in the '80s there would be multiple stops for windshield scrubbing. Maybe the German guy is right.

tim in vermont said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim in vermont said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Henry said...

@tim -- I'll have to keep an eye on that. On a drive across the country in 1987, I remember sluicing the bugs off the windshield in Missouri as if the green gods of inspect spit were spitting on us.

wildswan said...

It's no use pretending that fashion doesn't exist or that it will go away if you just explain to women that they ought not to think of it or notice it. It's as embedded in human history as war or religion. But it seems flimsy because it changes all the time. Fashion can't dodge associations; it's built on them. And you only know what the associations are if you live in the era. The associations kids these days have with scratchy records are simply closed to me even if I listened to those same songs on scratchy records back in the day. I hated scratches and filtered out the sound of them. But I liked and still like blues songs that were on old records from the Twenties and Thirties. The real fashion in any time is based on something that is very elusive and yet totally real. And I'd say the Kate Spade line is over. Very unfair to hard-working employees but honestly, they are in the fashion industry, they must know how fashion works.

And the anti-free speech people are in fashion right now with a certain age group. I don't understand that either. But it is a fashion like binding the feet of Chinese women and it will pass. But it might leave a tyranny behind it, that's what scares me. Right now for a little short time. a door has been opened for a left tyranny to come in by an inexplicable fashion among young Americans. And the tyranny might last because it won't be fashionable, it will be powerful.

But probably, hopefully, Donald Trump will make free speech great again.

Sprezzatura said...

I thought I'd cracked the code re getting deleted that's why I hijacked this thread re off-topic jabber at that start of the thread.

Now I see that I shoulda gone w/ chit chat re bugs and windshields. Even more off-topic.


BTW, if I was less lazy I'd try ta figure out who first came up w/ "windshield." Who decided that it sucked to have shit hit yer face? Was it Benz? Earlier or later? I'd guess that the tipping point was associated w/ cars gettin' faster (hence more wind) than horsey stuff. OTOH, carriages had windshields, for the folks fully enclosed inside. And, why were carriages fully enclosed, but early automobiles were open? BTW, it's cool to see that rich-folk cars did evolve to enclose the passengers, but not the driver.

Obviously humans are cool w/ having their betters shit on them. But, the stage needs to be set.

MAGA!

Birches said...

We just did 1000 miles from CO to AZ. Lots of bugs.

And Ritmo. I liked Kate Spade handbags, not because they were pricey, but because they looked so normal. Many luxury bags make their brand front and center. Spade bags did not, unless color counts as a brand signifier. After 5 babies, I think an actual purse is something worth spending money on. I won't question your buying habits, you don't question mine

HoneyBee said...

I'm with Michael. I despise the euphemism to pass used to describe death. It conjures up images of passing gas, undignified belches and farts and is a particularly inappropriate way to describe the desperate act of hanging oneself to death. Certainly casts a shadow over those ridiculously expensive cheerful handbags. Glad I never bought one! I find the way she tried to poison the daughter's opinion of the father in her suicide note, insinuating he was somehow responsible particularly horrific. Does not cast her in a positive light. If you are going to traumatize your child by killing yourself don't go out of your way to destroy their relationship with the one parent they have left. Poor child.

Sprezzatura said...

"I liked Kate Spade handbags, not because they were pricey"

Ha!

Do folks in these threads not understand that it's very easy to spend more than ten grand (not to mention many tens) on a bag?

I like gettin' a feel for normal folk thinkin'.

Actually, I only like it on the tubes. In real life it's a burden to play along w/ normal folks and their thinkin' re this stuff.

It seems like the tipping point is owning yer own jet, but not a shitty one, and not by a thread, IOW w/ lotsa buffer.

Then yur not playin' the game. Cause ya won.

IMHO.

The Vault Dweller said...

It seems like society has become more compassionate towards people who take their own life, after they have taken their life. I wonder if this works to lessen the stigma of suicide. I wonder if this is linked to the uptick in suicide rates, we've seen in the last two decades.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/06/07/617897261/cdc-u-s-suicide-rates-have-climbed-dramatically

I can think of two reasons they would be linked. As the stigma lessened it lowered one of remaining inhibitions some people who were suicidal felt. Also as the stigma felt, it might have contributed to some deaths that would have previously been reported as accidents, to correctly be reported as suicides.

tim in vermont said...

Wrong thread, sorry.

readering said...

I do that!

LilyBart said...

She left behind a 13 year old daughter. She's kind of a loser.


Her husband abandonment her (moved out 10 months earlier). Doesn't he get part of the "credit"?

Mark Daniels said...

I'd never heard of Kate Spade before her death.

But suicide is always a tragedy and is rarely done because someone is "a loser." It more often has to do with depression and/or physiological reactions to conditions or medications that swamp people's judgment and will like a tsunami. We see this, sadly, in the 22 service people who take their lives every day.

Spiritually, I believe that suicide can ultimately be traced back to the adversary that Jesus once said was "a murderer from the beginning." That doesn't exonerate that people who are the instruments of pain in others' lives, of course. But rather than blaming the victims of suicide or their victimizers to convince ourselves or others that we have it all together, a little compassion is in order, a little vulnerability.

Compassion and prayers for the survivors left behind, like Spade's daughter, are also important.

As a pastor, I've presided over the funerals of two suicide victims over the past thirty-four years. In each case, depression, some of it perhaps rooted in human pride and self-centeredness, was a factor. None of us is perfect and we are all complicated creatures. But the God I know in Christ is a God of grace and mercy. My job isn't to judge the eternal worth of the deceased, but to give the comfort of God's truth to those who mourn and wrestle with the question of, "Why?"

There are few satisfying or plausible answers to that question. Among the least satisfying or plausible, except maybe to our own egos, is she was "kind of a loser."

Ann Althouse said...

Thanks, Mark.

CStanley said...

That is a great comment, Mark. I'm baffled by some of the responses I've seen here where people seem to think that a harsh stance on suicide should be taken, as though that could deter other people from doing it.

And if we are concerned about the living, particularly children of those who commit suicide, isn't it better for them too if society looks upon their parents with compassion instead of calling them evil? These children lost their parents, do we really need to cast a bad light on the life that that parent led as well? You can't at least remember the good that was in that person's life and allow those children to celebrate that (as we would for any other instance of a parent dying?)

Birches said...

Some people might seem cruel whe talking about suicide, but we don't know who they are trying to persuade. This article points out that people who are on the edge need to hear it's not a noble choice. Of course we must be compassionate, but others need hard rhetoric to keep themselves alive. It's such a tricky line.

Bill said...

I dislike the expression 'passed' - mostly because it's incomplete.

Reminds me of when people close a letter or email with 'Best'. Best what?

readering said...

It's because of the majority opinion on this site that suicide statistics are unreliable. Too much stigma for candor. A grandma a victim but listed as natural causes and grandkids learned from surviving inlaw nearly 6 decades later.