via Frances Valentine @fvalentineny
Kate Valentine Spade was much more of then a Handbag Designer to me... She was awesome Storyteller. Her stories that she whimsically created through her designs and creative musings were far more impactful in my own creative life than I ever realized until her recent passing this week. She truly helped rescue my nearly forgotten childhood love of color, design and advertising via her reminder. Now many years later, I am beyond grateful that she was that style kind of Peter Pan inspiration to me. To not grow up and out of our childlike sense of creative wonder and to keep searching for pretty stories everyday.
I know now she was also more than that. And this even endures me more to her. That behind every story there is something far, far more human that we carry.
"Never say Goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting."
-J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan.
Thank you Kate and you won't be forgotten.
“Visiting Tennessee” ad campaign circa fall 2002. Photos: Larry Sultan via Kate Spade NYC.