Zibby interviews Elyce Arons, the cofounder of Kate Spade and CEO and cofounder of Frances Valentine, about WE JUST MIGHT MAKE IT AFTER ALL, a moving portrait of her decades-long best friendship and business journey with Kate Spade. Elyce describes their early days as broke college students, the scrappy beginnings of their brand, and how they turned a simple handbag idea into a cultural phenomenon and multi-billion-dollar fashion company. She shares how she is honoring Kate’s legacy with Frances Valentine, with vintage-inspired, colorful designs. Finally, she reflects on her resilience in the face of personal and professional challenges, the importance of community and friendship, and how writing this book was a fulfilling and emotional experience.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Elise. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked with Zibby to talk about We Might Just Make It After All, My Best Friendship With Kate Spade.

Congratulations. 

Elyce: Thank you, and thanks for having me. 

Zibby: Oh, it's my pleasure. I've loved this book for so many reasons. The fact that it charted the whole business evolution of Kate Spade and your involvement with that. So it was kind of like a business memoir on the side. But while you track your friendship with Kate Spade and both of it and it's really like your own coming of age story. I just loved it. It was like three books in one, so congrats. 

Elyce: Oh, thank you so much. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it and it was so therapeutic at the same time, just because there were so many stories. I mean, we'd known each other since we were 18 years old and we had been through so much being broke college kids together, moving to New York and you know, making it here.

Also being broke and you know, living in really strange apartments and scary neighborhoods, and finally, you know, breaking through and starting our own business, which was kind of scary. But when you're young, you kind of feel like you don't have much to lose. And I had no responsibilities at that point.

No children, no boyfriend, no husband. I didn't even have a houseplant at that point. So I, you know, if, if anything was gonna go wrong, best time for it in life to go wrong. So. That's how we got started. But it was, it was really, really wonderful writing the book. It was my husband and our other partner.

Pamela and I were sitting around talking one day and we were laughing so hard about some of the stories that we'd all been through. And Andy said, you should write a book. And that's what spawned the whole thing. And I started working on it and started writing stories down. And uh, you know, there were so many that I would write them in notes in my phone and then I'd take down, jot down something and on a piece of paper and just finally started putting a lot together.

And thank goodness I'm not a hoarder, but I kept all of my calendars from forever in a tub in my basement, and it really helped me put a timeline together once I had a lot of stories. You think you're gonna remember everything, and when you're young you really do, but it, you know it. I really needed those calendars to remind me of what happened in each year and what happened during certain seasons, et cetera.

And so it was really helpful to have those, and I don't know if I would've gotten it all right without them. 

Zibby: You know, that's what gets lost when you don't have actual physical diaries anymore. Journals and calendars and all that. I used to have that too. I would have like all my file effects and pages and everything, and I was like, oh, I can just go back and now it deletes.

So. Yeah, 

Elyce: I know, I know. It does make it so easy. And I, I also had kept all my spiral notebooks from any meetings we ever took. Anything. Wow. They're not as neat and clean as I'd like them to be because, you know, you're scribbling in a meeting. But I was really glad I had them. 

Zibby: Wow. Well, I should have begun by saying how sorry I am for your loss of such a dear old friend, someone who you shared such a rich history with, and whose loss became so public.

As well as your own private pain. I was wondering if you could speak about that. The book is not about that. The book is not about the loss, the book and it touches on it sort of very lightly, if you will, and really focuses on the joy and what Kate Spade was like as a person and what you were like and what you are like, and how the two of you interacted and your other partners and you grew the business.

But you know, when, when, when we, when I heard about Kate Spade, I wrote a whole essay about it and like posted it 'cause. I didn't know her, but everybody felt that loss so much. Can you talk about your own experience of that? 

Elyce: Oh, well, I, I, you know, I miss her every day and it was a devastating loss for, for all of us.

And, you know, the whole world knew her as the girl next door and best friend. And, but rather than focusing on her death and how she died, the book really focuses on how she lived and. I want people to know the Katie that I knew. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Elyce: That feisty, funny. Person who, it wasn't really her public persona, but she was truly the funniest person I I'd ever met.

And even David Spade, her brother-in-law will say she is the funniest person I knew. He knows every comedian, but it, it was just, um, I wanted to tell the stories of, you know, how we came of age and how we did all of this because there's so much richness and it really gives dimension to our relationship.

And you know, as you mentioned, the book is not, I, I wanted to show people how she lived and not ..

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Elyce: Not, you know, how she left us. So that's really where the book focuses, you know, as, as far as, you know, the tragedy of that day. I don't think any of us. Will ever know. You know, I'm still searching myself for answers to that question and I don't know that I'll ever find them.

So I have to go on and I have to focus on all the good things she was and keep her spirit alive. 

Zibby: Well, after reading the book, and obviously I have no, I have no authority on this, but it seemed like this event was so unexpected, so not aligned, that she had been making plans and just on the phone with her dad and all this like.

I have a theory now having read it, that this was some bizarre side effect of one of the new medications she was trying. This is, this is my theory because it doesn't seem to make any sense. So I'm gonna just throw that out there. 'cause uh, I dunno. Anyway, but back to her life. You were so scrappy in starting this business, Kate Spade.

Was even a concept, it wasn't even her. Right. There was a moment where she was like, well, I don't have to be Kate Spade. Right? 

Elyce: Right. 

Zibby: They're like, oh no, no, of course not. It's just gonna be the brand name. Next thing you know, that's who people think she is. So tell me even about that moment and the decision that you, when you found a name for the company and all of that, you know what it was like because she didn't necessarily come into this identity so easily all the time.

Elyce: No. And Katie was the last person who wanted to be in the limelight or in in the public eye at all. Um, I remember when we were in college in communications class, we all had to get up and give speeches, and we knew about it, you know, weeks in advance. And she was nervous from the day we got that assignment, how am I ever gonna get up in front of the class?

And so she was never the person who wanted to be Kate Spade. And when, um, it was Andy Spade who came up with the name, it was before they were married and he really liked the way her name sounded with his last name. Just calling her, she always went by Katie. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Elyce: Never Kate. So he just liked the way it all sounded, Kate Spade.

And so, and we all loved it. And the day that we were having the labels made up for the very first time she looked at all of us, she goes, don't expect me to be Kate Spade. And, you know, it wasn't to be she. Um, I think it really happened, not necessarily after they got married, but which happened about a year and a half later.

But really when she won the CFDA award mm-hmm. For the very first time, and you become that person and she became the designer. So from that point on, and, and she was extremely nervous about having to give the acceptance speech if she'd won that night after being nominated, so. 

Zibby: Going back to what you just said, you write in the book about the moment where you're all sitting around and decide to put the labels on the outside and how you were all sewing them and it became this iconic important thing and it was just like, oh, it just doesn't look done.

There's something missing. Take us through that, that moment again, and what if that hadn't happened? I don't know. 

Elyce: Well, for those people who had some of our original Kate Spade bags, you know that there was no embellishment on them. They were very simple chic bags and, and all geometric shapes. And that was the whole beauty of them is that you could wear them with anything.

You could take them anywhere and. We had no hardware, like a lot of the European bags and, and you know, there weren't that many American handbag companies out there at the time. And so it was the night before the show and we had made these really cute men's shirting labels almost feeling like grow grand, but they weren't, and they were sewn right inside the bag.

You know, right underneath where, you know the lip of the bag is. And we were, we had 'em all set up the night before and Katie just looked at him all, you know, from a distance and she, so she's such a good editor and she said there's something missing. We need somewhere for the eye to go. I. And she'd had some, some of those labels just loose and she put one just right under the lip of the bag on the outside and she said, that's it.

So we taped them all up, looked at them, and then decided to sew them all on the night before the show. And it's not just sewing through fabric, it's sewing through lining, and then there's a, you know, filler in between and then the outside, which was very difficult on our fingers because we didn't have time to take them back to the sample maker and have them redone.

So it was, uh, quite a story, but that one little thing to me in my mind that I remember just took it from a handbag company to a brand. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

So interesting. Well, you lauded Katie throughout the book. You acknowledge her amazing eye and how. You could have a million things up and she would say, yes, this is the one.

And like that's the bag and that's the thing. And that she had this ability to just know. And that's not something you can teach, right? 

Elyce: Yeah. 

Zibby: But what is teachable is how you take that and pair it with the fundamentals to grow it into a brand. Plenty of people have a sense of what looks good, or maybe in whatever area they're in, maybe that film is gonna be good or that whatever.

But that's not enough. So talk about how you managed to take the creativity of her and her eye and all of those strengths, and then all the things you brought to the table, your other partners, and then, and then how you grew it. And it wasn't always so. Such a straight line. 

Elyce: No, it wasn't. Um, well I have to give credit to Andy Spade.

It was his idea to start the handbag company in the first place. And he and Katie called me one night and said, okay, we know what business we're gonna have. And I, you know, quit my job. I worked there a few more months, quit my job and came home. And in the meantime, we met our fourth partner, Pamela Bell, who knew everything about production because she'd had her own jewelry company before.

So of course we thought we knew, we all knew everything. My experience had been in sales and marketing. Katie's had been an editor at a magazine. You know, Andy was this great branding guru in advertising. And Pamela knew about production and we thought, well, that's. That's all we need. Not thinking about finance or you know, a business plan, anything we, we never had a business plan ever, and so thank goodness we didn't know what we didn't know, because I don't know if we would've started it.

It's sometimes great to go in blind to things, so at the beginning it was just Pamela and Katie and myself. Andy would eventually join us about three years later. But at the beginning we were all doing everything. We were all working on the design, we were all, you know, going to the factory together and working on the production.

And then we were all packing the bags for shipments and, and showing up at, you know, various trade shows and we would get in the biggest fights about the smallest things, and it was really always about a different way to do the same thing. We all had the same end goal, but you know, Pamela had her way I had in mind.

Katie was often acting as referee between us because we didn't get along at the beginning at all. Eventually we did, and she's still one of my best friends. But we found after a period of time that it was better to each do what we were. Strongest at doing so. Katie did the design and, and it's funny because neither one of us had design degrees.

Uh, we both graduated with journalism degrees from, from college, and she would make these cutouts out of craft paper and tape them together and then pass them over to a pattern maker and it go back and forth for a little while, and then we'd pick materials for it and eventually have samples made, which Pamela would work on with in product development and with uh, the pattern maker and the sample maker. And then once all of the bags were assembled, we'd sign up and do a show at the Javits Center, which was then called the accessory circuit. And I would be the, I was the salesperson and then I handled any press that came around. And at the beginning there was none, but it quickly changed and I was fielding tons of calls from magazines, um, because it, you know, it was really.

Something new and different at the time and it just caught on like wildfire. And honestly, you know, I sometimes wonder how we devoted so much time to it, but it was really a 24 7 thing and it was sort of like all of our first baby. And I loved being there. There was no other place I wanted to be, but at the office, um, working.

So I could talk. 

Zibby: Not everybody can say that, that, that, I mean, 

Elyce: I'm still that way. I love what I do. Yeah. 

Zibby: And that is such a gift. I mean, I'm, I'm, I, I, I can feel the people like driving their cars listening to this and being like, oh, if only I felt like that. 

Elyce: I haven't had the Sunday blues for a really long time.

So I feel really fortunate. 

Zibby: And just to fast forward to where you are now, so after Kate Spade and all of that changed hands and everything, you took a break and then you and Katie were just starting Francis Valentine, which you now run. 

Elyce: Yes. 

Zibby: Talk about this new iteration. And for those listening, by the way, I Elise's.

Wall behind her is full of fabrics and feathers and bright colors and hot pinks, and it's just like you, you can't not be happy like everything behind your head. I'm like, that would be a great wallpaper. Well, that would be a great wallpaper. 

Elyce: I know. I think it would be a great wallpaper all the time. I love it.

Zibby: That could be your next, we should go into wallpaper, but whatever. 

Elyce: Yeah, we should. We should,.. 

Zibby: Right? 

Elyce: Well, maybe eventually, maybe eventually. Yes, exactly. 

Zibby: Well, tell me, tell me about the fast forward and how okay that company is going. 'Cause now I feel so invested in you and your work life and the business and how this is sort of an extension of the whole thing.

Elyce: So we sold, after owning Kate Spade for 13 years, we sold it to Liz Claiborne, which is now, you know, the tapestry business. And we took about. We, we had, hadn't planned on getting back into business necessarily. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Elyce: We kind of thought, oh yay, we never have to work again. But we both really missed work even though we were really involved with our children's schools.

We started talking again 'cause we really missed creating and we missed fashion. So we started talking through time and Pamela and Andy had both started their own businesses again, but they were really happy for us 'cause they knew we loved working together. So I would go up to Katie's apartment, we'd start working on things and she, she really loved accessories. She loved shoes and she loved handbags. So that's where we started. And we launched Frances Valentine. And Andy said, if you don't get, if you don't rent a space, she's never going to come to an office. And, and truly he was so right. So we rented this space, um, at Bryant Park in 2014, started working on all the designs.

We launched it on Valentine's Day in 2016. And you know what we realized was so much had changed. I mean, eight years had gone by really since we left Kate Spade. And you think you know everything when you've run a business for so long. But the whole world had changed. E-commerce had taken over.

Influencers had become such a big part of business, uh, and taken over from editors and we just had so much to learn about social media and, you know, retail and wholesale businesses changing so much. So took us a couple of years to get there, but we, we were just taking off. Everything was great. And then we tragically lost Katie, you know, it was really devastating because so many of the team here are, um, folks we'd worked with at Kate Spade too. And, and everyone knew her very well, loved her. And, you know, we decided that we were going to keep the company going for Katie's legacy, for her family, for, you know, just for, for the entire team here. So. We kept doing accessories, um, because that was what Katie loved.

But in, in a tribute to Katie, I wanted to do something special for her. So we remade this calf tin, this vintage calf tin. She and I had been huge vintage shoppers since we were in high school and college together, and we remade her favorite calf tin that she had worn on every vacation we'd ever taken together.

And then. Also one of the sweaters that we had bought together decades before that she wore all the time. And we made those as sort of a tribute to her. And of course they sold out immediately and they sold out again and again. And people started asking us for all of the items that we were using to style our ad campaigns.

And they were all our vintage pieces that we had collected together over the years. So of course I was like, well, we'll never make pants and we'll never make jackets and we'll ne now we make everything but the, um, the apparel, you know, every time we bring a new piece in, I have to imagine Katie in it.

Loving it because she did love her vintage pieces. The the difference with, with ours is they are vintage inspired, but they're made with more modern materials. We do our best to put pockets in every single thing we make. And I want them to be comfortable, but stylish at the same time. But the, the, the main feature of them, they have to bring joy to the wearer.

So we, we use a lot of color and a lot of vintage prints and, you know, our, our motto is where, what makes you happy? And that goes for our shoes, our handbags, and all the apparel pieces and the jewelry, which you know of already. 

Zibby: Yes. The jewelry, they're just. 

Elyce: Fun, beautiful pieces that are not trend driven.

They're meant to last in your closet for the rest of your life, and we hope that you pass them down to your daughter or your granddaughter because the, the craftsmanship and the quality is really good, like a vintage piece. So I. I could talk for hours. You probably have another question to ask. 

Zibby: No, I love that.

I was just talking to a group of women over the weekend about pockets. I know that sounds crazy, but just how amazing it is when you find, when you get an item and you find out they have pockets and know you're like, and they have pockets. It's like, 

Elyce: I know we did this really beautiful body hugging, you know, kind of black tie sequin dress last year.

I mean, it's gorgeous. You just, everybody looks good in it. And the model who was having, we were doing a photo shoot and the model who had it on, she goes, oh my god, it's got pockets. She was so happy to have an evening gown with pockets in it. It was really fun. 

Zibby: That is really fun. Oh my gosh, I love it.

What do you think helped you through, because there were so many times in this process where things were going wrong, like there was a flood in the office or like just the big things like that to the, to the little things, to the interoffice squabbles, to the new management team coming in and not necessarily respecting your vision or not getting along so well.

There were personal setbacks, like what do you think it is about you or you slash the team that said like, okay, we're just gonna get over this. Like, it's not even a question. 

Elyce: You know, I think, I think that might be partially because we were all from the Midwest and we didn't give up on things easily. I mean, when you move to New York from Kansas, it, you know, you, you have a, a slight chance of, you know, remaining here because it's, you know, it's tough when you don't know anybody and you move to a big city.

And so I think us all sticking together and we all really depended on each other for that. I also think it was because. Our customers loved the product so much and it really kept us going, it, it talking to all the customers all the time because at that time we did a lot of events at retail stores and department stores and just meeting them just brought you up.

It just cheered you up so much because they would tell their own personal story about the bag that they bought or about the bag they bought their daughter or their mother or their grandmother, and it, it just. It fueled what we did. Every day. And I think that's probably the main part of it. You know, it was great to have my business partners because we not only work together every day, but we socialize together and we spend our family time together.

And for some people that's a recipe for disaster. Luckily for us, it worked out well. Um, but we often found ourselves even during. Social time talking about work. 

Zibby: Yeah. Your social life by the way. Like you knew everybody. You were out at all the restaurants doing all the things. I was like, do I even have any friends after reading this book?

Do you know what I mean? Like there were always people in your apartment and it's even your honeymoon. I mean, my gosh. So, I mean, you're obviously such a warm and friendly person and social and extroverted, whatever. How do you keep friendship in your life when things are so busy? 

Elyce: You know, I love having people around and luckily I married someone who is the same way.

My husband is from Boston originally, and he owned all the gourmet garage stores around town. So he, you know, he is always at his stores and he knew everybody and he loves the same things I do. He loves music, he loves animals. And, um, we were both very social people when we met, so we would have parties all the time.

And, you know, back then it didn't have to be fancy. As long as you had a bar set up and good food and great music. That's all you need. And, and inviting interesting people. We were lucky enough to live downtown and it was a time when the art scene was flourishing downtown and Soho was still primarily artists and writers.

And so we knew a lot of those people and they just made every party colorful and fun. So, and, and you know, Katie and Andy were always there and they are two of the funniest people I've ever known in my life and always, you know, the, the hit of the party every single time. So I felt really lucky to have that time in my life and to, you know, to live in New York during that era.

Not that it's not great now, um, it was gritty and a little tougher and rough around the edges back then. Um, but I was glad to be able to have lived in New York then and, and also now. 

Zibby: Amazing. Well, I feel like we should partner in some way. 'cause you have all these amazing, I'm looking at this, I'm like, that would be great book cover.

I don't know. I would love to find some ways to collaborate in the book world and the fashion world and whatever. 

Elyce: We'd love to. They're all, all the prints and, um, so we could use them however we'd like. And, uh, they're, they really, they brighten. They really brighten the collection up and they, I just, I turn around and this is actually a working wall.

It's not a wall that's been curated at all. I literally put things up there all the time when I find something fun. Might not have anything to do with apparel or, or handbags, but I just love this wall and I turn around and stare at it all the time. Really inspires you to do more things. It's fun. 

Zibby: I gotta, I have to change my background now.

After all this. 

Elyce: You've got the appropriate background with all the 

Zibby: I know. I know. But yours is just so fun. I'm just jealous. 

Elyce: And you're color coded. 

Zibby: I'm just jealous, envious. And of course, your book cover matches everything with the same, you know, these perfect classic colors and everything for the book itself.

How do you feel about. Marketing the book as a product. When you've spent so much time marketing, fashion and accessories and whatever, now you have a new thing to put on the market. Are you using sort of the same skills? How do you feel about the writing process and all that being over? Was that the best part?

The worst part. 

Elyce: Well, you know, it's all new to me. This is, this is a whole different world and I feel so different than the fashion business and creating apparel and accessories, so, and I love new projects. So this whole process, I had no idea how to start or what the middle was gonna look like or the end was gonna look like.

And I know for myself, I thought we were finished long before we were, because I was like, okay, run. And then there's all the edits that you have to do and there's all the fact checking. They're like, are you sure that restaurant was open in that year? And I was like, yes. I looked in my calendars and that's where we were that night.

So, uh, there, there was just so much of that and. I luckily was the, was the person in our group that always had a camera in my handbag. Uh, I just, I just always did. So I have all of these great photos of Katie and Andy and me in college. I shouldn't say great, they're blurry photos, but I have, and um, it means a lot to me that, uh, it's, it's kind of chronicled back in the days, uh, before iPhones.

But, um, I, I really, really enjoyed the process and I worked on the book a lot with my husband who was there during all of that time, and he added a lot of texture for me where I was. Lacking in some, and I was like, oh my God. Yes. That's perfect. That's right. And I just, I adored writing this. It was really, really wonderful.

And my, my wonderful daughters gave me lots of space and time, um, to do so last summer. So they were really helpful with it too. I would do it all over again. It was, I, it really thoroughly enjoyed the process. And anybody who's thinking about it, I would suggest to start writing your stories down. Whatever is coming to your mind that you're thinking that would be a good book.

Just start writing your stories down because I, I can tend to forget things over time and, uh, when I was. Talking to our partner, Pamela and Andy Spade, they really helped me remember some of the really funny stories and some of them I wasn't even there for necessarily, but they're hysterical and they ended up in the book because they were such critical little pieces that, that were just so descriptive and, and, and how we turned a corner on something.

So it was really helpful. And talk to your friends about, you know, those kind of stories because writing them down, uh, was really important to me. 

Zibby: And I loved meeting your husband too, when you were here for the most anticipated. Oh, thank you. Yeah. That's awesome. It's great to have such a partner, especially after I watched all of your relationships in the book and everything.

So now I am, I'm so rude for you. I'm so glad you had this happy ending. 

Elyce: I got so lucky with him. I, I swear I, to find a single man. He was 39 years old and never been married and he had a really cool apartment and a food, uh, like a whole beautiful specialty food company. He's cute and he's funny and he liked everything.

I liked. I was kinda like, is this real there? 

Zibby: Well, you deserve that and more your attitude and sort of de Viv and the whole thing. It's so additive, right? You're just bringing joy to so many people and all the things you do, and I really, really enjoyed the book. It was moving and the loss part was moving.

The growth part was moving. I really, really enjoyed it. Congratulations. 

Elyce: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. That means a lot coming from you. 

Zibby: Oh, thank you. All right. Thank you, Elise. 

Elyce: All right, have a good one. 

Zibby: Okay. Have a good one. 

Elyce: Bye. 

Zibby: Bye.