Kate Spade was a celebrated fashion designer who was found dead in her New York apartment on June 5, 2018, from an apparent suicide. She was 55 years old at the time of her death. According to police, a housekeeper found Spade hanging from a red scarf tied to a doorknob in her bedroom. Her husband, Andy Spade, was home at the time. Spade left a suicide note addressed to her 13-year-old daughter, telling her it was not her fault. Her family said in a statement, "We are all devastated...we loved Kate dearly and will miss her terribly".

Spades sister has said that she may have taken her own life because of a struggle with mental illness. However, there have been rumors of marital discord and presuming intimate knowledge about the state of Kate Spade’s psyche in those last hours. Andy Spade, her husband, said that she had suffered from severe depression and acknowledged that they had been living apart for the last 10 months.

Kate Spade was born Katherine Noel Brosnahan on December 24, 1962, in Kansas City, Missouri. She worked for Mademoiselle magazine in New York City before leaving in 1991 to put her creative energy toward designing her own line. She founded the Kate Spade brand in 1993 with her husband, Andy Spade, and later sold the remaining shares of her company in 2006. She later resurfaced with a new fashion brand called Frances Valentine in 2016.

In conclusion, Kate Spade was a fashion designer who died from an apparent suicide in 2018. Her death shocked many people, and there have been rumors about the reasons behind it. She was a successful designer who founded the Kate Spade brand and later started a new brand called Frances Valentine.