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Fashion Designer Kate Spade Found Dead After Apparent Suicide


Fashion designer Kate Spade was found dead on Tuesday morning in her New York City home. Though few details have emerged authorities are reporting her death was an apparent suicide.

According to a New York Police Department spokesman, a housekeeper discovered Spade, who was “unconscious” and “unresponsive” in her Park Avenue apartment at around 10:20 a.m. Tuesday and was pronounced dead at the scene. She was 55 years old.

Spade launched her eponymously named handbag line in 1993 alongside her then-boyfriend Andy Spade who she met while attending Arizona State University. As TMZ reported, the two got married one year later in 1994 and watched their brand flourish over the years to include both clothing and jewelry lines. The pair also had one daughter together, Frances Spade.

The pair sold a majority stake of the company in 1999, CNBC reported, to the department store Neiman Marcus for an undisclosed amount of money. In 2007, the brand was then sold for $125 million to a group then known as Liz Claiborne. In 2017, the brand was sold again to Coach for $2.4 billion, however, neither Kate nor Andy saw a dime from that acquisition as they had both relinquished any remaining shares, according to Forbes.

“When we sold the company in 2007, it was really to focus on our family. It really was. It was a grind. I had just had a baby,” Spade told CNBC in 2016.

Following the sale of Kate Spade, the pair went on to launch a new line named after their daughter, Frances Valentine.

“My grandfather, father, brother, and my daughter’s name is Frances. And then Valentine was my mom’s dad’s middle name because he was born on Valentine’s Day,” Spade told WWD in November 2015 about the line’s name. Both the Kate Spade and Frances Valentine brands continue to be sold in stores and beloved by fans around the world today.

If you or someone know are in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting ‘Home’ to 741741.

This story is developing.



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