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Seven years on, Elyce Arons still misses Kate Spade.
The two pals met in college at the University of Kansas and remained kindred spirits for nearly 40 years. Together, they helped launch Kate Spade New York in the 1990s and had recently started a new accessories brand, Frances Valentine, when Spade took her own life in 2018, at the age of 55.
“I think of her every day,” Arons told The Post. “I still get choked up talking about her.”
Spade’s death seven years ago shocked the fashion industry. Her cheery, colorful designs made people smile, and she seemed to have a picture-perfect life, with a creative, supportive husband and daughter who adored her.
In her new book, “We Just Might Make It After All” (Gallery Books, June 17), Arons writes that Spade had suffered from depression in the months leading up to her death. The two spoke about it and had even “discussed the suicides of celebrities in the past and [Katy] had said definitively to me, ‘I would never, ever do that.’”
Arons also writes that Spade “worshiped her daughter” and that she and husband Andy Spade were “working out their marriage issues and living separately” but that they “loved each other to the ends of the earth.”
“She was private about many things, even with me,” she writes. “A highly sensitive person, she felt things more deeply than most. … We all have dark moments and periods. In one of those moments, she lost hope.”
Arons’ charming and effervescent memoir depicts the beloved fashion designer as a fierce friend and driven worker whose intense charisma belied an incredible shyness.
She laughed when her tulle dress caught fire during her wedding reception (the guests dumped their drinks on it to extinguish the flames), lost the cap of her tooth when climbing a tree before a big meeting with the Esteé Lauder Company, and played pranks on her friends.
She was, in short, a delight.
“I feel like so many people remember how she left us, and I want them to remember how she lived,” Arons said. “She was such a talented person, of course, but such an amazing friend.
“She was loyal. She had great values. She was authentic. And I know a lot of people thought of her as a girl next door … but she was the clever girl next door.”
Arons and Katy Brosnahan — later known as Kate Spade after she launched her eponymous brand and later married Andy Space — first met in 1981.
It was freshman move-in day at the University of Kansas. Arons arrived from her parents’ cattle farm in Sedgwick, Kan., in “purple parachute pants and scrunched green leather pointy-toed boots.” Spade — who had gone to a private all-girls Catholic school in Kansas City — sported khaki shorts, a polo shirt with a popped collar and Weejun loafers.
“I looked at her and I thought, ‘Oh my god, she’s boring,’” Arons admitted.
But after they discovered they were both financial-aid students studying journalism (due to a mutual obsession with Mary Tyler Moore) they bonded. One night, while smoking Virginia Slims outside a party, they divulged their family secrets to each other. Arons cried as she recalled losing her older sister to bone cancer at 9 years old, and Spade recounted the pain of her parents’ divorce when she was the same age.
“To share that tragedy, finally, with somebody who understood was a big deal,” Arons said.
“That was the moment I knew I had a friend for life.”
The two partied, shopped vintage and studied together. When Spade decided to transfer to Arizona State University — near where her older sister lived — Arons followed her.
“We talked each other into stuff so easily,” Arons said. “It was like we were attached at the hip.”
Later, in New York City, Arons worked in fashion PR while Spade was a fashion and accessories editor at Mademoiselle. Spade noticed a lack of good handbag options for the shoots she styled.
So she decided to create her own.
“Coach existed, but it felt like an old traditional leather handbag company and it wasn’t aspirational at all,” Arons said. “Katy saw this void in the market [for a] functional bag that a woman could actually use and that actually accessorized her outfit and made her feel great. That was the brilliance of it.”
Arons, Spade, Andy and another friend, Pamela Bell, launched Kate Spade New York in 1990. Spade spent her days creating prototypes out of cardboard on the floor of her and Andy’s Soho loft, while the others worked nights and weekends to hatch their business plans.
Two days before debuting their bags at the big accessories trade show in Manhattan, Spade decided she wanted their discreet labels sewn on the outside of their vinyl and burlap bags instead of the inside. She, Arons and Bell spent three hours hand-stitching these strips of fabric onto their samples until their fingers bled. But it worked. Barneys and Charivari placed orders. Soon, Saks started carrying them, too.
As the business expanded, their lives changed, too. Katy and Andy got married in 1994. In 1999, Neiman Marcus acquired a 56 percent stake in the brand.
Despite Spade’s magnetism she was very shy. Interviews and public speaking made her anxious. Yet, as the brand grew, so did her fame. When Kate Spade launched a fragrance in 2002, Spade had to travel across the country to promote it, often alone.
“That was very hard for her,” Arons said. “Every single day, a different city by herself. And it wasn’t just that she had to speak to people and come up with something clever, but she had to look good … It was just a lot of pressure.”
Their friendship had its ups and downs. “I had my worst fights with her,” Arons recalled. “But one of us always called back later and apologized.”
When Arons had her first child, she named her Katy, and asked the Spades to be her godparents. They enjoyed playing pranks on one another. Arons remembers one time that Katy got a giant rubber rat and put it in the kitchen sink for Arons to find. “That scared the heck out of me!” Arons recalled with a laugh.
In 2006, the Spades, Arons, and Bell sold the company to Liz Clairborne. Arons and Spade still constantly talked about work and fashion, however. They came up with the idea for Frances Valentine after Arons found a pair of orange patent leather pumps she wanted, but balked at the $1200 price tag.
“I thought, ‘We can do this for $398, and it would be really great quality,’” Arons recalled. The two launched Frances Valentine (named after Spade’s daughter) in 2016 as a shoe and handbag line.
“We were both doing everything,” Arons said. “It was a blast. It just felt good to be back and have the social life at the office again … And we were pretty much just taking off, and that’s when we lost Katy.”
After her friend’s death, Frances Valentine released a special limited collection of two vintage pieces from Katy’s wardrobe: a light-blue traditional Mexican caftan she wore on vacations and a sweet cable-knit sweater festooned with bright embroidered flowers. “We called it our Love Katy collection, and our customers went crazy,” Arons said. “They sold out immediately, so we made them again, and they sold out again, and again.”
Now, Frances Valentine has a full apparel collection, which makes up 60% of the brand’s business. Nearly all the pieces are based on items that Spade and Arons picked up on their thrifting adventures and treasured.
It’s a way for her to stay connected with her best friend.
“I think about her all the time, especially when I’m steaming something that nobody else notices needs steaming,” Arons said.
“Our friendship was so special,” she added. “Maybe people get that once in a lifetime.”
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or are experiencing a mental health crisis and live in New York City, you can call 1-888-NYC-WELL for free and confidential crisis counseling. If you live outside the five boroughs, you can dial the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention hotline at 988 or go to SuicidePreventionLifeline.org.
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