Why Kate Spade Will Always Be My Fashion Fairy Godmother

I owe a lot to Kate Spade. I didn’t know her personally, and now that she is gone, I’m sad I never got the chance to meet her. Spade’s tragic death yesterday, and the outpouring of love from longtime fans and colleagues, not only reminded me of how significant an impact she had on the fashion industry, but also how much a material thing can mean to a young woman. I don’t mean material in the sense of a high price tag or a high-end label (nor am I talking about the still-fawned-over head-to-toe logos we see on most runways these days). What I am referring to is a special token of fashion iconography that molds and shapes our ability to self-express. Yesterday, many took to Twitter to share memories of working with and for Spade, as well as the first Kate Spade bag they ever purchased. “I’ll never forget the moment I got my first Kate Spade bag—it was like a rite of passage into [becoming] an adult, and I’m sure a lot of girls felt the same way,” one woman wrote. “The first Kate Spade bag I ever owned gave me the confidence to walk with my head held high,” said another. I was a 14-year-old high school freshman when I received my first Kate Spade bag. The black square-shaped nylon mini tote was a birthday gift from my parents.

I’d seen Spade’s bags in all of my mom’s fashion magazines and, like everyone else, I was drawn to their simplistic design. They were approachable, unassuming, and yet completely luxurious-looking. They were cool. Up until that point in my life I didn’t quite understand what being cool meant or what fashion was entirely, and I certainly didn’t know how to interpret it for myself. I’d followed the lead of the Spice Girls and Cher from Clueless. Delia’s was more fabulous than Dolce & Gabbana. My style was whatever style was prescribed to me by the cheery photos in Limited Too catalogs and, later, those pubescent prepster-filled Abercrombie & Fitch ads. In my tweens, fashion was a mystical thing that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around, but then, just like that, poof! I opened the Bloomingdale’s box wide open and slung that brand-new Kate Spade tote over my shoulder.

It was as if I’d been touched by a faraway fashion fairy godmother. Spade was a woman I could aspire to be with one flash of that little black bag. This was back in my hometown of Chicago, where shopping was limited to suburban malls and a five-block radius near my house downtown. It would be several years before I discovered Carrie Bradshaw and plotted out my dream scenario future in New York, writing all day and somehow procuring the funds to buy Manolo Blahnik shoes and Louis Vuitton bags on leisurely Saturday afternoons. Spade, and everything she represented, was unapologetically real. As I’d come to find out by reading about her in Vogue and seeing her on TV in those days, she was a former accessories editor at Mademoiselle who decided to create the perfect accessory that she could never find for herself. From one practical purse she built a billion-dollar empire. Aside from my mom, Spade was the first power woman whom I ever really looked up to and the first woman who, however inadvertently, gave me the confidence to start experimenting with my own style.

Through her accessories, she represented the kind of grown-up I knew I wanted to be, even at the impressionable age of 14. Spade made me realize just how much I inherently loved fashion. I was never a girl who swooned over or studied runway shows or the careers of Marc Jacobs and Martin Margiela. What I did know was that I loved to get dressed up, and for the first time in my life, that early Kate Spade bag gave me the wherewithal to do so with unabashed aplomb. The bag might have been minimalist, but it served as the anchor to every outfit I tried on back then, whether it was pleated skirts and Ugg boots, beaded cardigans buttoned over graphic T-shirts, or patchwork jeans with platforms. I’d carry my textbooks in a North Face backpack and my pens and automatic pencils in my mini carryall. I always started with my Kate Spade and built a look around it. No matter how magpie-d the clothes looked on my body, I had the purse clutched in my hand and thus, at least in my own mind, I was chic.

I wouldn’t find myself in New York for eight more years. I wouldn’t land my dream job at Vogue for another six. I spent a long time figuring out what my style was with clothes, with relationships, with writing, with the way I carried myself. In fact, I’m still figuring it all out. And though I was always taught not to put a value on material items, especially when working in an industry that is laser-focused on the makes and models of clothes and accessories, I will always hold my Kate Spade bag in the highest regard. The person who made that little thing is now gone and so is my bag, but I’ll carry the magic she unknowingly bestowed on me nearly two decades ago as proudly now as I did then. A bag isn’t just a bag when you realize the power of the woman behind it.