KATE SPADE: INVOKING MEMORIES
Posted by Deirdre | Filed under Blog
The shocking news of fashion designer Kate Spade having taken her own life at the age 55, prompts me to remember the pert and vivacious former journalist who visited Toronto in 2002 to launch her first Kate Spade perfume. The scent smelled of gardenias, which had been my wedding flower. We chatted about the lure of perfume to invoke memories, and so I thought it fitting to revisit that conversation in tribute. I am sorry most of all for the daughter she has now left behind.
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Accessories rule — and the profusion of belts, bags, hats, shoes, scarves and baubles on the runways proves it in spades. Or is that Spade? As in U.S. designer Kate Spade, now widely recognized as the force behind the mania for all things double-handled and stitched within an inch of their classically cut forms.
The former Mademoiselle accessories editor has become a millionaire several times over in the nine years since she launched an eponymous line of ladylike handbags and shoes. Put it down to her uncanny ability to predict society’s current fascination with accessories, which have eclipsed staples like dresses and suits as key fashion statements.
In Toronto this week to promote her new fragrance line, Spade says she is a behind-the-scenes person. The journalism grad’s first ambition was to be a TV producer: “I always saw myself as Holly Hunter in Broadcast News.”
Why, are you that demanding?
“No, it’s the details. I’m a details person. That’s why it’s always been accessories, and now scent. I can never see myself wrapping my arms around clothing.”
The cult of the purse, a phenomenon of the nineties that saw the Hermes Kelly bag, the Prada bowling bag and the Fendi baguette reaching iconic status, was an elitist pursuit until the unassuming, Kansas City-born Spade came along.
Unable to find a moderately priced, ladylike handbag without the jangling hardware that often characterizes a designer purse, Spade set about creating simple square-cut bags in vivid hues and practical fabrics such as nylon and canvas in the $150 to $300 range.
She filled a niche. And women coveted her products. A sign of her success is the brisk black market trade in Kate Spade knock-offs on the streets of New York — as haggled over as the Louis Vuitton and Gucci wannabes.
And so, with husband and business partner Andy Spade (brother of comedian David Spade), she has become rich. And hotly sought after.
At the Toronto launch of her Kate Spade perfume, the Martha Stewart of accessories (her Midas touch also extends to a line of stationery) was swarmed by women wanting to catch a glimpse. She sat poised at the centre of the hordes, in a black backless John Anthony cocktail dress, her hair pinned up like Audrey Hepburn’s, her own Venice basket purse at her side, her own strappy black sandals with white leather flowers at the toe adorning each genteelly crossed-at-the-ankle foot.
The new perfume is a bouquet of white flowers that says female and proud of it. Ranging in price from $36 for a scented trio of delicate soaps to $110 for parfum, it is packaged in the same colours that characterize the handbag line: coral, lime and chintz yellow. The scent rises from the paler parts of Spade’s arms like the smell of honeysuckle after a storm. How reassuring to know the boss wears the product.
People with deep pockets have been urging Spade to try her hand next at clothing. They hope she can do for the beleaguered skirt what she has done for the purse, bestowing upon it a newfound chic based on values our mothers once prized: something basic, boxy, roomy, durable, fun.
But Spade says fashion is interesting to her only if she loves it. “I want to surround myself with the things I like.”
And one of the things she likes best to soak for long hours in the tub and smother herself in scented lotions and summery perfumes. She recalls watching, with her sisters, her mother at her vanity, primping and preening. For her own beauty line, she chose a bottle inspired by vintage perfume bottles with traditional stoppers. And its shape evolved from Spade wanting to go round. “I’m known for doing squares,” she says. “I wanted to do something different.”