WE MIGHT JUST MAKE IT AFTER ALL

A memoir, by a longtime friend and business partner, of the life of designer and fashion icon Kate Spade.

Arons met Katy Brosnahan as a first-year student at the University of Kansas and transferred with her to Arizona State. There, Katy met Andy Spade, brother of comedian David, and fell in love while also sharing his interest in art and design. After graduating, Arons took a job at a New York department store display firm, declining a lower-paying position at Ralph Lauren: “I took the job with the higher salary instead of the Ralph offer, probably not the swiftest decision I’ve ever made, but at the time, it seemed to make sense given my lean bank account.” Kate and Andy joined her, with Kate becoming an editorial assistant at Mademoiselle until, one day, they cooked up the idea to make handbags and other accessories. “Objectively, there was no reason that we couldn’t start a handbag company from scratch,” Arons writes, “apart from the lack of capital, the absence of know-how in manufacturing, zero experience in finance, and a hundred other things I didn’t know about yet.” Yet it worked, spectacularly, for 13 years, until, in 2006, the partners sold to a bigger brand that kept the name—which, Arons adds, now does “annual sales north of $1.4 billion.” After honoring a noncompete clause, Arons and Kate came together again to start a new accessory company, a project cut short when Kate took her own life. In the end, Arons calls Spade’s suicide an “incomprehensible choice,” which seems a bit of an evasion, given that it’s a choice so many make on concluding that there’s no other avenue; more work on revealing the sources of Kate Spade’s depression would have made this a richer and more useful book.

A sad story that never quite gets to the heart of the matter: depression in all its fraught complexity.