Kate Spade, American designer whose bags carried women into adulthood, is dead at 55

NEW YORK — Designer Kate Spade, who created an accessories empire and whose handbags became a status symbol and a token of sophisticated adulthood for American women, was found dead Tuesday.

Spade built a brand on the appeal of clothes and accessories that made women smile, her cheerful lack of restraint and bright prints striking a chord with consumers.

She was the embodiment of her own aesthetic, with her proto-1960s bouffant, nerd glasses and kooky grin, which masked a business mind that saw the opportunities in becoming a lifestyle brand, almost before the term officially existed.

Police said Tuesday that Spade, 55, was discovered unresponsive at a Park Avenue apartment where she had hanged herself in her bedroom. She was pronounced dead at the scene at 10:26 a.m. She left a note, but the official did not comment on what it said.

A housekeeper found Spade, police said. She was unconscious and the housekeeper called 911.

Spade's husband was at the scene. A police spokesman did not know the whereabouts of Spade's 13-year-old daughter.

Born Katherine Brosnahan in Kansas City, Missouri, in December 1962, Spade was one of the first of a powerful wave of female American contemporary designers in the 1990s.

Spade, who had been the accessories editor of Mademoiselle magazine, founded Kate Spade with her husband-to-be, Andy, and a friend, Elyce Arons, in 1993. Frustrated with the handbags of the era, which she found to be over-accessorized, she had wanted "a functional bag that was sophisticated and had some style," she told The New York Times in 1999.

She did not know what to call the company at first and decided to make it a combination of the names of the co-founders. After the first show, she realized that the bags needed a little something extra to catch people's eyes. She took the label, which originally had been on the inside of the bag, and sewed it to the outside. With that gesture, she created a brand identity and her empire.

Within a few years, she had opened a SoHo shop and was collecting industry awards, her name a shorthand for the cute, clever bags that were an instant hit with career women and, later, young girls, status symbols of a more attainable, all-American sort than a Fendi clutch or Chanel bag. Spade became the very visible face of her brand and paved the way for female lifestyle designers like Tory Burch and Jenna Lyons of J Crew.

Joe Zee, the former creative director of Elle and former fashion director of W, met Spade before she started her company, within weeks of his own start in the fashion industry.

"She told me she was thinking of starting a handbag line in that carefree, excited way she had," he said. "I remember her describing some aspects of it to me and what she wanted to do, in that same spirited manner she had when she talked. It was always colorful, said with excitement and a smile."

The Spades left in 2007 to devote themselves to other projects. Spade dedicated herself to her family and to philanthropy, and in 2016, together with her husband, Arons and Paola Venturi, a Kate Spade alum, launched a new venture, an accessories label called Frances Valentine. Spade was so committed to the project that she told interviewers she had changed her surname from Spade to Valentine.

A spokeswoman for Kate Spade New York said in a statement that while "Kate has not been affiliated with the brand for more than a decade, she and her husband and creative partner, Andy, were the founders of our beloved brand. Kate will be dearly missed. Our thoughts are with Andy and the entire Spade family at this time."

Zee said he always admired Spade for being ahead of her time.

"She knew what the fashion world needed before we did," he said. "Kate just did what she felt was right, regardless of what the industry would think."

William K. Rashbaum and Ashley Southall contributed reporting.