Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Fashion designer Kate Spade to be buried in Kansas City

Kate Spade

Bebeto Matthews / AP

This May 13, 2004, photo shows designer Kate Spade during an interview in New York.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Fashion designer Kate Spade will be buried Thursday in Kansas City, where she was born.

Services for Spade are planned for 3 p.m. at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Redemptorist Church. Her father, Frank Brosnahan, says it's the same church where Spade's grandparents wed.

Spade was found dead by suicide on June 5 in her New York City home. She was 55 and had a 13-year-old daughter.

Spade was working as an accessories editor at Mademoiselle magazine when she launched her company with husband Andy Spade in 1993.

Andy Spade says she had depression and anxiety for many years. He said in a statement released earlier this month that his wife was seeing a doctor regularly and was taking medication to treat her disease.

He said he and his wife had been living separately in the 10 months before her death but saw each other or spoke every day. He said they were not legally separated and never discussed divorce.

Coach, now known as Tapestry, bought the Kate Spade brand last year for $2.4 billion. Kate and Andy Spade recently had started a new handbag company, Frances Valentine.

In lieu of flowers, the family has asked for donations to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or a Kansas City animal shelter.