Kate Spade’s father said he spoke with her shortly before her apparent suicide and that she was planning a trip to California, The Kansas City Star reports. “I don’t know what happened,” 80-year-old Frank Brosnahan told the publication Wednesday. “The last I talked with her, the night before last, she was happy planning a trip to California to look at colleges. She doted on her daughter.”
Brosnahan said he knew Spade was having troubles and that she had been taking pills that he advised her not to take. He also said his daughter would be glad if ongoing, global talk about her death were to have a positive impact.
“One thing we feel is that any talk that they do that helps somebody else, Katy would have liked that,” he said. “She was always giving and charitable. If that helped anybody avoid anything — fine, she’d be delighted.”
Spade’s death Tuesday in her Manhattan apartment has sparked questions about bipolar disorder. In an email to “CBS This Morning,” Spade’s sister, Reta Saffo, said she believed Spade suffered from the mental illness.
“It finally took its toll on her. A very tragic and sad ending to the life of a very colorful and delightful being,” Saffo wrote.
She said she believes Spade “did not receive the proper care” though she “tried numerous times to get her help.”
Spade’s husband Andy Spade issued a statement Wednesday saying the designer suffered from depression and anxiety.
“She was actively seeking help for depression and anxiety over the last five years, seeing a doctor on a regular basis and taking medication for both depression and anxiety,” Spade said in the statement, which was obtained by The New York Times.
He confirmed he and his wife, who he married in 1994, had been “living separately” for 10 months. He said they were living blocks from each other, and their 13-year-old daughter, Frances Beatrix, was living with both of them.
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