"It was a tribute to the idea of East Coast preppy culture, a love note to Salinger and Cheever, to the Kennedys, and to the early ’60s..."

"[Kate Spade] ads had the confidence and charm of a Wes Anderson film, a few years before Rushmore made his style instantly recognizable. They’d taken a love of WASP-y Americana and merged it with a winking downtown irony, in a formula that brands like J.Crew and Tory Burch would later emulate with great success. In retrospect, it’s hard to appreciate how cool those simple handbags were.... Everything about that year in my life felt vivid, even though I only worked in retail and went to college. I lived a few blocks north of the store, in an apartment with two rooms and no bathroom sink. Outside of the shop, life might have been chaotic, but inside, everything was calm and under control. I loved going to work and was never bored, even when it was just me and Julia, my store manager, listening to Joni Mitchell and eating peppermints while we waited for customers...."

From "Remembering the Magic of Kate Spade" by Stella Bugbee (New York Magazine).

Reading that made me think and the first thing that I saw was the sun through yellow curtains and a rainbow on the wall/Blue, red, green and gold to welcome you, crimson crystal beads to beckon....

And I once lived in a NYC apartment that had no bathroom sink. (There was a big, claw-footed bathtub, and leaning over it to wash hands or brush teeth became the norm. And I must have put in my contact lenses there. That's the hardest thing to picture. I guess I put the rubber plug in the drain and went for it.)