"The designer Kate Spade, who created an accessories empire and whose handbags became a status symbol and a token of sophisticated adulthood for American women, was found dead on Tuesday. One of the first of a powerful wave of American female designers in the 1990s, Ms. Spade built a brand on the appeal of clothes and accessories that made women smile. Her cheerful lack of restraint and bright prints struck a chord with her consumers, many of them cosmopolitan women in the early stages of their careers. She embodied her own aesthetic, with her proto-1960s bouffant, nerd glasses and playful grin....." (NYT)
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71 comments:
She should have changed her name.
I would have gone with Kate Mohamed or maybe Kate X.
This virtue signaling about Roseanne and inappropriate wording must have spooked her.
Kate Spade sold 56 percent of her namesake company in 1999 and the rest in 2006. Total value of the company was $125 million. In 2017 Kate Spade was sold to Coach for $2.4 billion dollars...
Roy Raymond founder of Victoria's Secret sold for $1 million in 1982. Less than 10 years later VS was worth over $1 billion. He jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge in 1993.
I don't know the details but it must have really been soul crushing to see the company with her name change hands and be worth billions, while she was probably struggling to start all over again with a different brand. Don't ever sell your name.
NYT makes a point to say she hung herself with a scarf. NYT readers secretly desperate to know what kind.
Don't ever sell your name.
Said the McDonald Brothers.
She was married to David Spade's brother Andy.
NYT makes a point to say she hung herself with a scarf. NYT readers secretly desperate to know what kind.
Isadora Duncan
I am not so fashion forward as I'd like to be - was mistaking her for Vera Bradley and Lili Pulitzer. Looking more at her designs, I'd call her whimsy a wonderfully understated one.
Who but the most shallow would link her name to suicide? I'd say that she was trying to fake it 'til she made it, and then got tired out.
Do we associate Dior with John Galliano's trainwreck?
Maybe Robin Williams might be a better analogy.
I've known the fashion brand name Kate Spade for years, but I never knew until today she got her name from being married to a member of David Spade's family.
Is that even true? A girl once bought me a bag by Jack Spade, who, I assumed, was the hubby.
"Who but the most shallow would link her name to suicide?"
Huh? She committed suicide! She linked her own name! She had lovely, happy things associated with her (whether she owned the company or just enjoyed the proceeds from selling it) and she changed the brand into something associated with suicide. It was unusually cheerful stuff, very cute, just the polar opposite of suicide. Even if you don't want to be alive, do you want your work product to be diminished?
I carried a black Kate Spade bookbag to work for something like 20 years. I still use that except I got a slimmer black-and-white striped back that's no larger than I need for my laptop. It too is Kate Spade.
I used a Jack Spade wax bag as a carry on until I wore it out. I've had a Spade silver 'Pi' keyring at least a decade.
It still makes me happy...
tcrosse said...
She was married to David Spade's brother Andy
Yes, it's big news here in Phoenix since the Spades are from Scottsdale.
It is a terrible story, made worse by the fact that she left a note for her 13 year old daughter saying it wasn't the girls fault and to "ask daddy." That was so cruel. You are already leaving behind your poor daughter and now you have ensured she can never had a normal relationship with her dad, wondering what the guy did to drive her mom to suicide. I can't imagine how self-centered you would need to be be to express your pain that way. And I understand serious mental pain. If you can't possibly bear to live anymore, the nice thing would be to make it look like an accident.
Baggage would be good for a suicide line.
The Kate Spade overnight bag.
The Kate Spade overnight bag.
It's to die for.
Again, Ann: do you associate Dior with the drunken trainwreck of Galliano? Do you associate Robin Williams with his hanging himself? Or do you look beyond that to the body of their work?
Let's take it even further: Whenever you hear the Trout Quintet, do you associate it ith the composer's having died young from syphilis complications? When you hear "Strange Fruit," do you think of Billie Holiday's cocaine addiction that lead to her iconic Gardenia hair ornament?
Nearer to your educational underpinnings, maybe: Who all doesn't look at anything by Jackson Pollock and not see Schizophrenia (complicated by psychedelic drug use, possibly)?
In any event: I'm sorry your purse is now suddenly giving you the creeps.
Gahan Wilson had a happy-face decorated body bag.
Does one associate the works of David Foster Wallace with his unhappy end ?
Whenever I engage in autoerotic asphyxiation, I leave a suicide note so my relatives won't be embarassed by the circumstances of my demise. I blame Trump in the note. That way there will be sympathetic coverage of my passing in the media.
This never would have happened if she had changed her name to Lew Alcindor.
I hope the police at least entertained the possibility of foul play. The determination of suicide seemed to be awfully quick. Tests take time.
This is a very sad event, and quite shocking, actually. I feel sympathy for her daughter.
Think's comment reminds me of the idea that suicide can not only be a cry of despair but a weapon against the living.
You just knew with a name like Spade, she'd end up digging her own grave. As a Bridge player, spades have a special place in our hearts. She lives on through her brand name luxury goods. I know people who I wish would commit suicide, she wasn't one of them.
I love all things Kate Spade. I love the whimsy of the brand. I'm so sad to hear of her death. I'm sad that she was in such a dark place, emotionally. I wouldn't wish depression on anyone. I'm even sadder for her family - especially her daughter, whose life will tainted by this forever. Suicide is a very selfish act.
@Bill: it generally is. My stepfather used it against my mother, when she first tried to get rid of him, after her figuring out that he was a pedophile. It was also used against me by my mother, when I left.
I know nothing about Kate Spade's situation, but wonder if it wasn't a combination of a creative (often diagnosed as Bipolar) person being overwhelmed at a lot of things, and under the influence of psychotropics normally prescribed nowadays. It isn't going to affect my appreciation of her design sense, though.
rhhardin said...
Gahan Wilson had a happy-face decorated body bag.
The funniest collection of his work ever in Playboy. Those "happy face" lesions on that sick guy still sets me off to this day!
A lot of suicide comes from anger. Almost every suicide note could be summarized as Fuck You! I liked Gary Shandling’s suicide note joke. “I’m not mad at anybody, this is just something I’m doing for me.”
Its funny how some people commit suicide despite "having it all" while most of us will hang on to dear life despite torture, prison, slavery, disease, etc.
Usually women just *attempt* suicide. Even in killing themselves men are more successful. Ms Spade was the exception.
The whole logic of "I really hate you, so I'll kill myself" escapes me.
I'm more of a "I really hate you, now I'm going to murder you" kinda guy.
’m more of a "I really hate you, now I'm going to murder you" kinda guy.
“Better to give an ulcer than get an ulcer” - Casey Stengel... I think.
But let’s say somebody is a. big brother, who can beat the shit out of his little brother at will, and somebody is a little brother, who has to take the beatings and never tell mom, each of them as a child is going to form an idea of their self worth. That’s just one of thousands of fucked up dynamics that occur in families. I know a lot of people here scoff at therapy, but there are people stuck in ways of thinking and being that they arrived at as children, and they don’t even know it. What is more childish than suicide? “Every hates me, nobody likes me, I’m gonna eat a worm.”
I discovered a man hanging from a tree by a tie-down strap along a river one cool summer morning. I was working along the river bank which was well known for bums, druggies and dealers. When I saw the guy, he looked like he was just standing there as his feet were planted on the ground. I yelled out to him to warn of my approach, but he just stood there, calm as can be. Then I noticed the strap going up to the tree branch. He was wearing shorts and his lower legs and arms were dark purple from the pooled blood. His neck was unusually long. It looked like critters had been trying to make a meal out of his feet and ankles. He did look very peaceful, serene even.
"Now I fill my pockets like a man, because then you don't actually have to carry anything."
http://www.vogue.co.uk/article/jane-birkin-no-longer-carries-birkin-bag
“I am not so fashion forward as I'd like to be - was mistaking her for Vera Bradley and Lili Pulitzer. Looking more at her designs, I'd call her whimsy a wonderfully understated one.”
I much prefer Vera Bradley, hope she’s not depressed.
When one likes neurotic unstable creative types, suicide is sort of expected.
Can Bruce Jenner be far behind?
In my town there was a guy who hanged himself and his wife found him before he was dead, while he was still kicking. He died on the way to the hospital, but what a fucking bastard to do that to his wife.
In China, one of the most horrible things you can do to someone you hate is hang yourself outside their house. Sort of like that death scene in the second season of Rome, some of the best television ever, but not for blue stockings since there is female nudity and sex which is...outside the mainstream
One of my patients years ago was a survivor of a hanging. Very sad that he lived with severe brain damage for quite sometime thereafter. I also had a patient who was a survivor of a self inflicted gunshot, not pretty. I also had a patient that was a survivor of a suicide attempt by running full speed and jumping through a plate glass window during group therapy, several stories up, very combative patient. Maybe it was Karma that they survived.
You have to wear a red skirt and a green blouse with that purse. You have to be loud.
Etienne,
Calling that bag a "purse" is to hip for this demo. That's a "pocket book" 'round here.
Carry on.
I think if you are going to kill yourself, Spring is the best time. The weather is just terrible for funerals at any other time. Winter is the worst.
My aunt died at age 8 in the middle of winter. They had to keep her in the barn until Spring, when the ground thawed.
Etienne: Only apocryphal, but, don't most elderly / people who are suffering from long term illnesses die just at the end of Winter or early Spring? I've heard theories about the mindset as being Just Tired.
It's a fracking purse- not she made a major contribution to humanity.
Funny thing: the only time I've had suicidal ideation in my life, the Better Part of my Altogether started yelling at the part wanting to jump into the train: "No, You Are Sick. Stop Thinking Like This. Get to Work." Instead of jumping into the Blue Line, thinking like I was Garbo in Anna Karenine, I got onboard. Made it to work somehow, then collapsed under my desk. My boss found me, then started looking up mental health help in the yellow pages. That first shrink was Crap; could never remember my name from appt to appt. Later shrinks have been more or less successful.
Initial Shrink (shrink n) : "You are doing so well. Why are you unhappy? Life is Good. What was your name again?"
n+1 : The Past is your Issue. Stop Thinking About It. (She ran women's empowerment groups in Iran pre Revolution. There was something to what she was saying, I guess.)
n+2, via an EAP: "Listen, things are bothering you. If the people who are bothering you are such Blithering Idiots, why do you place so much importance on their words?"
n+3: The Pill Pusher. Always trying to get me into antidepressant studies. First time I ever took an anti depressant / anti anxiety medicine. Horrible. Even after I rejected said drug (that the psychopharm that worked with her was always prescribing, but told me to stop), she still kept trying to get me on test studies for psychotropics.
n+3 again: "You really need to have a radio show."
n+4: France. An English Lady, specialized in Autism Spectrum anglophone kids. My partner (most likely on the NPD spectrum, if not actually full blown Borderline) actually listened to his shrink when she said that I probably needed someone who wass better aligned to the Anglo school of psychiatry / social work.
The lady there told me vaguely that, as my now ex was such a source of anxiety, maybe I should Get Back Home Again. She didn't know if I was autistic spectrum, as the symptoms vary, especially if a kid's been abused.
n+5: Current therapist, assigned at random, just up the street from me, Anngie is about the Best Match ever. She is a south Korean national, naturalized to the US at the age of eight. She seems to get the US-born Fat, Ugly by US Standards, but still valuable person's mindset on things.
Sometimes I ask her, "Angela, why don't you End It?"
She answers, "Bev, Because it's not for me to end things."
***
Ann: if you don't like your wrist purse, I will gladly trade you my moss colored Longchamp back pack for it.
"...thinking like I was Garbo in Anna Karenine..."
That was yur problem. Ya shoulda thought of Tolstoy, not Garbo. That text (actually a translation, presumably) living in your mind is what is living.
No Hollywood rubbish.
IMHO.
anti-de Sitter:
I'm using this term (dis)respectfully, but: Dumbass, I was referring to the scene from the film, not the Novel. That you would even attempt to curate a suicide scenario for someone else puts you in the ranks of that Masshole from a few months back.
Inga: “I am not so fashion forward as I'd like to be - was mistaking her for Vera Bradley and Lili Pulitzer. Looking more at her designs, I'd call her whimsy a wonderfully understated one.”
I much prefer Vera Bradley, hope she’s not depressed.
- It's amazing how much Vera Bradley can be found, on the cheap, in vintage shops in midwestern areas.
Oh, you were referring to the movie, I had no idea that you were referring to Hollywood.
I'm not smart enough to understand what you wrote.
I also had a patient who was a survivor of a self inflicted gunshot, not pretty.
My students got to interview a guy who had shot himself in the temple and missed. The bullet was in his frontal sinus.
Interesting interview,
anti de sitter: you might be Ann at her worst dealing with her ex. Or you could just be a troll. Fuck You in any Event.
If anyone notices, that handbag sports a gentle, wistful smile. Sort of upbeat. Isn't that kind of inappropriate given the circumstances of its creator's death. I think Ms. Spade would prefer to be remembered by a tightly zippered, black handbag.
Think, 5:02:
"she left a note for her 13 year old daughter saying it wasn't the girls fault and to 'ask daddy.'...You are already leaving behind your poor daughter and now you have ensured she can never had a normal relationship with her dad, wondering what the guy did to drive her mom to suicide."
I read that elsewhere, and wished I hadn't.
My first reaction on learning of a suicide (I only knew one directly; in the other cases, I knew a grief-stricken relative or friend) has been anger at the pain they inflict on those left behind. I have tried to understand that something like an insanity defense often applies. They are usually not thinking rationally. But this is shocking if true; it just seems so calculated and cruel.
"tcrosse said...
"Does one associate the works of David Foster Wallace with his unhappy end?"
Luv ya T, but he kinda did that himself by incorporating suicidal themes into his wrk. A short story featuring the train of thoughtof a guy who is about to drive into a bridge abutment comes to mind.
"a weapon against the living" Yes. Also true historically, e.g., in China.
I wonder, when she sold her company, did the lawyers think to include a no-suicide clause?
You don't commit suicide when you have a 13-year-old. You just don't. And I know how solipsistic and disconnected from reality you can be when you want to commit suicide. But you just don't.
I don't really care for her designs (although I have no taste in handbags anyhow), but seeing how many people had such affection for her work, and imbued it with such meaning, her suicide does seem terribly sad. My heart is black as pitch so I usually don't feel much of anything when I hear some celebrity or other has killed himself, but I actually did feel sadness here.
I don't think it overshadows the objects themselves -- or will do in a matter of years, at any rate, as opposed to now, when it's all in the news -- but it's not like a comedian committing suicide (clowns are famously sad) or a novelist committing suicide (that doesn't seem too unusual either). Commentary keeps presenting her handbags as a girl's first "adult" handbag, but I think part of the appeal must be (judging from their appearance) that they actually seemed quite girlish and playful, just "adult" enough to pass in the professional world. I can't think of a good analogy, but it's a little more like if Walt Disney had committed suicide, really.
Luv ya T, but he kinda did that himself by incorporating suicidal themes into his wrk
IJ read in places like one long suicide note.
I gave my mother a Kate Spade scarf. It was supposed to be cheery.
I agree with Openidname. If you have a 13 year old, you don't off yourself.
Very sad.
That handbag pictured does not look cheerful to me. A square strap, vicious looking zipper, and the color of government mustard.
Right now, I'm worried about a young disabled person I know who's going through a difficult but normal for a young adult transition. Because of his disability, the transition is much more difficult and stressful for him. Not too long ago, there was the movie "Me Before You" where a disabled, wheelchair bound person commits suicide (even though he has a caring family, love interest etc - in other words a lot of good things in his life). The suicide and affect on the loved ones is romanticized. The young person I know thought the movie was very touching - he is somewhat naïve and intellectually behind. I could tell his parents were not comfortable with this attitude or with the movie. I hope the love of his family overcomes any idea that his life really is not worth living and that suicide is an option.
suicide is painless. still a nice, fun bag.
As often is the case, it seems she was afflicted with bipolar disorder. I agree with the commenters that the suicide and the note were horrible, but I wish people had some understanding of how untreated mental illness removes a person's agency.
It's horrible too that someone decided to publicly reveal the contents of that note. Had that not happened, the people close to the family could have concealed it from her daughter at least until she was older.
I also have to say that in my opinion this reaction of feeling that her life's work, her bags that made people happy, is somehow tainted now is really selfish. Even though her final act was terrible, and selfish if you look at it that way (see my comment above- I blame the illness), her life was more than that final act and she should be remembered for that.
Her sister mentioned that Spade had resisted treatment because of the negative publicity that it would have brought to her brand. In other words, she dreaded the exact thing that her suicide has brought, and the suicide part could potentially have not happened if she hadn't felt that pressure to be an emblem of happiness.
So yes, people who derived pleasure from her work must now face the fact that happiness coexists with sadness, and try to find compassion for someone whose mind was unable to integrate happiness and despair.
Honestly, I had no idea that handbags had such a profound effect on people's moods, or that there was such a thing as a celebrity handbag designer.
Taking a hard line against suicide, especially for those with children, is a position taken in service to the living.
"Huh? She committed suicide! She linked her own name! She had lovely, happy things associated with her (whether she owned the company or just enjoyed the proceeds from selling it) and she changed the brand into something associated with suicide. It was unusually cheerful stuff, very cute, just the polar opposite of suicide. Even if you don't want to be alive, do you want your work product to be diminished?"
It doesn't happen all the time, but we have all heard of despondent moms who murder all their children, then finish up with suicide. Maybe this is what Ms. Spade had in mind. Her brand was worth 10 times what she sold it for: Kill herself, maybe take the brand down too.
Incidentally, I never associated Kate Spade with David Spade. I had never seen the fashion brand in written form, I had only heard the name in spoken form. I assumed it was one of those fashion things where the pronunciation is way different from the spelling. It sounded like spade, I assumed it was spelled Spode, or something equally non intuitive.
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