Instead, you saw her smiling and holding her husband’s hand as they walked through the Upper East Side in New York City. She seemed to live like her brand: you never saw pictures of Spade looking sour-faced at black-tie celebrity parties, as you do with most designers. She was a deeply creative woman who devised an entire aesthetic. She coined the filtered, Instagrammed world 20 years before Instagram was invented. Her original adverts, which shot the brand to fame, featured women taking their children to school, or talking with their friends, or eating with their husband – but always looking perfect. Spade was not about elitism: when you enter her shops, you don’t feel intimidated – you feel welcomed. For a start, the brand is aspirational, but far more accessible than most designer names, which is why a Kate Spade bag – available for a fraction of the price of a Chanel one – was the first smart handbag for so many women. So many labels are based on the appeal of the designer’s personality, from Karl Lagerfeld to Phoebe Philo, but Kate Spade was different. The sudden glimpse into the blackness that lay behind all that, and the realisation of how hard Spade must have worked to keep it hidden for the sake of her brand – coming across as happy and dynamic when often she must have felt otherwise – was shocking and heartbreaking. Certainly, Spade projected this in interviews and photos, where she played a smart double game of coming across like a cheerful 50s fantasy and an astute, modern businesswoman. As the actor Mindy Kaling tweeted on Tuesday: “You couldn’t walk into her boutiques and not smile.” Spade and her husband, Andy, repeatedly claimed in their interviews, before they sold her eponymous label just over a decade ago, that the brand was an extension of Spade’s personality, all cheerfulness and ease. Suicide is always horrific, but the Kate Spade brand is predicated on happiness, sunshine, bright colours, gentility, sweetness. Lots of people on Twitter were really upset by Kate Spade’s death.
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