SEPTEMBER 2019 111
AMURMURWENTthrough the Kate Spade studio when Nicola
Glass took over as creative director, the kind of muffled whisper that
runs through an office about the new person. “I kind of banned bows,”
Glass says with a semi-penitent laugh by way of confession from her
8th-floor office at the label’s Park Avenue, New York headquarters. “There
was a ripple that went around the company of: ‘She doesn’t like bows!’”
That’s hardly controversial, but when you are talking about a multi-
billion-dollar brand that introduced exuberant quirk and fashion with
a wink to a generation of American women (and then the world), a bow
is serious business. Now, almost a year after showing her debut
collection at New York Fashion Week – the first-ever Kate Spade
runway show – the Irish-born designer has chalked up four seasons
without bows. “It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just that I felt it had
become a little bit too: ‘Oh, it’s got to be feminine, we’re going to slap
[one] on the back of that coat.’”
For the American label known for affordable luxury, ornamental
flourishes like these once demarcated Kate Spade, adorning toes of
shoes, perching on necklines and peppering the huge array of product
categories from homewares and fragrance to bridal that made it a
lifestyle brand. The company was steered by namesake founder Kate
Spade from its launch in 1993 until 2007, and then for 10 years by
Deborah Lloyd, who leaned heavily on the novel to expand the offering.
Glass views her banishing of the motif as drawing a line under the past.
“There are other ways to make something feel feminine,” she posits.
“I just wanted to loosen things up a bit.”
Glass was appointed creative head in January last year, after parent
company Tapestry Inc. bought Kate Spade in 2017. Now, seated behind
a desk just hours after presenting her autumn/winter ’19/’20 offering,
her second main season for the label, Glass is wearing wide-leg velvet
trousers in a shade of deep forest with a matching silk blouse. Her
cropped platinum-blonde hair is flicked to one side and her light blue
eyes are framed by rims of smoky eyeliner. Her only visible jewellery is
a bubblegum-pink stone atop a cocktail ring and subtle gold looped
earrings. Conscious or not, she is embodying the brand’s new direction:
sleek, but not self-serious.
She has just shown a line-up of 40s-inflected 70s separates, suits and
dresses along with her rethink of accessories, the category the brand
built itself on when Kate Spade, a former accessories editor at
Mademoisellemagazine hailing from Kansas City, launched the now
famous Sam bag. It was a boxy mini-tote that soared to popularity
owing to its offering in a rainbow of colours and price-accessible fabrics
like nylon. Although the company has long produced a clothing range,
bags still made up 55 per cent of Kate Spade sales in 2017. Glass is now
looking to pump up the ready-to-wear contingent.
“I came in and re-invigorated the handbags, but I think that ready-to-
wear is so important,” she says, noting she’ll keep print and colour, but nix
the literal interpretations of things like flowers and butterflies in favour
of a subtle abstract floral and a clover-like motif cleverly made up of four
spades, which appears on intarsia knit jumpers, vests and skirts. “In a way
it’s actually the ready-to-wear that brings you more fashion credibility.”
For autumn/winter ’18/’19 she built on the pastel-heavy but not
saccharine debut for spring/summer ’19, evolving the colour palette to
include more grown-up syrupy browns, sangria red, rust and
boysenberry. Pastels this time were colour-faded until they became
barely there shades of wisteria, ballerina and sky on lace-up suede boots.
Dresses too came out once again and appear to be a core focus, like the
triptych of long-sleeved versions that opened the show with 40s shoulders
and nipped waists that could easily transition throughout the day. Some
were cleverly work-focussed, with collars and buttons; others were silken
midis, wrapped with fluttering bias-cut sleeves that could do day or night.
None were excessively embellished, fitting with the “polished ease”
Glass describes as part of her mission of usability. “When you wear the
clothes, you should feel quite put together, but they’re still very easy to
wear, and they’re comfortable,” she says.
And while she is happy to leave certain things in the past, others she
was forced not to. She was only months into the job when the fashion
world was rocked by the sudden passing of founder Kate Spade in June
last year, at age 55. Although Kate and her co-founder husband Andy
Spade had sold their stake in the company in 2006, for many her name
spoke to a certain respect for women’s individuality.
“I think she was someone who – and I never met her, so this is my
perception – really encouraged women to experiment with fashion, →