My upbringing was in an upper middle class town in Connecticut. I will admit it. This town has gone through a huge transformation since the 70's, where a bunch of artistic hippies grew into conservative label whores. Money does that to people. Not sure why. Look at the history of
Richard Hayne of Urban Outfitters. He went from building houses in Alaska, teaching the natives English, to donating a shit ton of money to Santorum. Hippies get tired of being hippies and want to make money at something, I guess-so technically they were never really hippies...
Anyway, label whores. I was in high school when Kate Spade designed her first line of handbags. Everyone had one. The girls that couldn't afford them went to Canal Street to buy fake ones. This desperate need to fit in saddened me. So, being the little deviant devil that I was, I completely ignored this company (and let's be honest, anyone that wore it). I never looked into who they were or what they were about because I thought I knew.
Then I heard whispers of them selling. I thought even worse things. Many designers have sold their souls. This is nothing new but it sort of played into what I thought of Kate Spade and co. in the first place. Complete sell outs. If you're tired of what you do, how can you sell your name, let someone else use it for profit and just walk away? I mean
59 million dollars would make it easier, for sure.
Next, I had read that Andy (who is David Spade's brother, btw) opened a design firm/storefront. I looked at the
site and became utterly confused. It was cool. How was this possible?
Then, when I saw a feature of their home on
The Selby, I started to wonder. Who the fuck were these people? Really?
Turns out, they're just people. Pretty smart people, actually. This interview
here and
here says quite a bit. I'm still not impressed that they sold out. They're no Calvin Klein, you know what I'm saying?
Even though they have nothing to do with the company whatsoever anymore, I actually went to katespade.com for the first time ever and saw things that I liked. I won't buy them but, they're ok.