Thursday, June 14, 2018

Kate Spade was a housewife who struggled in midlife



Kate Spade who died at 55 years old was the quintessential American success story. She and her husband Andy Spade started producing classic handbags that would eventually become a billion dollar empire. They sold the brand to Liz Claiborne and eventually became detached from the company by 2007. Recently, Tapestry Inc. (formerly Coach) bought the brand for more than two billion dollars.

“At the 10-year mark in 2002, sales were $70 million, and e-commerce was added in 2004 — years before many designers were on board with the idea of selling online. The company changed hands again in 2006, when it was sold to Liz Claiborne Inc.”

“One of Spade’s primary incentives for leaving her signature label was to focus on being a full-time mom. “Having waited to have a baby as long as I did, which was 42, I wanted to be there. I felt it was a luxury that I couldn’t pass up,” she said.”


For the next thirteen years of her life, she stayed home. It was only in 2015 when she decided to launch (with her partners) another fashion brand called Frances Valentine. 

“Being a mother adds an enormous amount of stress to your life. You need to make sure you’re there for everything,” she told The Cut. “We don’t have other people to do it for us — I want to make sure I’m there. When you’re trying to be a parent and a businessperson at the same time, that is the most stressful thing you could do.”


According to her former publicist, Kate kept a distance from the limelight after she sold the brand. He said that she was invited to the best events in New York but often declined.

“Kate disappeared. The friends and the people like myself haven’t seen her for several years...I saw her assistant about a year ago and he told me he would go to her apartment twice a week and pick up her mail, and she would get an invite to every fabulous event in New York, and she declined them all. Kate really removed herself from society, from New York, from the fashion world, and she really just focused herself on being a mom.”


In an official statement, Andy Spade admitted that they were not divorced or legally separated but were living apart for the last ten months. According to Andy, Kate was actively seeing a doctor and taking medication for both depression and anxiety.


Recently, a US study revealed that a good number of medications could lead to depression. Apparently, it can also happen to those who do not have a prior history of depression. 

“It was previously thought that a `predisposition’ i.e. a history of mood disorders would make a person susceptible for experiencing a depression side effect,” Spelsburg, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

“Obviously,” she continued, “depression side effects are very common among individuals without any `predisposition’ who take more than one drug with this adverse effect at the same time.”


Another study on antidepressant risk revealed the following:

“The analysis found that in the general population, those taking antidepressants had a 33 percent higher risk of dying prematurely than people who were not taking the drugs. Additionally, antidepressant users were 14 percent more likely to have an adverse cardiovascular event, such as a stroke or a heart attack.”


Another issue for women at midlife is known as menopause. There are some women who breeze through the whole event while others experience debilitating symptoms. Few people understand the phenomenon because there are often conflicting experiences about it. 

“Although some women can have an episode of depression for the first time during menopause, women with a history of recurrent depression are up to 4.5 times more likely to experience another episode of depression at the start of menopause than other women at this stage of life.”


Clearly, more research in the medical field is needed to get a tighter grasp on these issues. But Kate Spade seems to have gone through many similar struggles that mothers at midlife face. She was not alone. Would have been nice if she knew that back then.






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