NEW YORK — Fashion designer Kate Spade was found dead in her apartment of an apparent suicide Tuesday, law enforcement officials told Pat Milton, senior investigative producer for CBS News.
The officials said housekeeping staff found Spade inside her Park Avenue apartment in Manhattan at about 10:20 a.m. They said she left a note at the scene but the contents of the note were not divulged. She had apparently hanged herself with a scarf attached to a door knob. Her husband and business partner Andy Spade was in the apartment at the time, police said at an afternoon news conference.
The NYPD’s chief of detectives, Dermot Shea, said that while investigators were still in the early stages of their inquiry, evidence including the state of the apartment and the presence of a note pointed to “a tragic suicide.”
It’s not clear how long Spade had been dead. The medical examiner will perform an autopsy.
Spade, who was 55, created a line of sleek and simple nylon handbags in the early 1990s that created a smash. The bags were popular with the fashion set, but with more accessible price tags than those of other high-end handbags.
Spade was Kate Brosnahan when she quit her job as an accessories editor at Mademoiselle magazine to make her own line of playful and feminine bags. She worked with her boyfriend Andy Spade, who would become her husband, to launch her first collection. They combined their names for the brand’s name, but the name became her own in 1994 when she married Andy, brother of comedian David Spade.
In 2007, Spade and her husband left the business after selling it to Liz Claiborne, Inc., now called Kate Spade & Company. By then, the handbag line had expanded into an apparel brand that sold clothing and jewelry. At Claiborne, the brand began to make bedding, legwear and fragrance, and eventually shoes, stationery, eyewear, baby items, fragrance, tabletop, bedding and gifts.
In 2016, Spade launched a new fashion line called Frances Valentine, and even changed her last name to Valentine to match the brand. She told WWD at the time of the line’s name, “Frances is a longtime family name on my dad’s side. My grandfather, father, brother and my daughter’s name is Frances. And then Valentine was my mom’s dad’s middle name because he was born on Valentine’s Day.”
Kate Spade New York has over 140 retail shops and outlet stores across the U.S. and more than 175 shops internationally.
Just last year, Coach bought the Kate Spade company in a $2.4 billion deal, CBS New York reported.
Spade was the aunt of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” star Rachel Brosnahan.
Kate Spade arrives at the Council of Fashion Designers of America awards in New York on June 2, 2003, at the New York Public Library.
Chip East/REUTERS
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