Frances Valentine Co-Founder Elyce Arons Reflects on Her Friendship with Kate Spade

Before Kate Spade’s tragic death, she and Frances Valentine co-founder Elyce Arons had been best friends for 37 years. Arons reflects on their bond in her new memoir, titled We Might Just Make It After All, and shares memories of their decades-long friendship.

Alison: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. I am so very grateful right now to be sitting in an air-conditioned studio here at WNYC. It's really brutal outside. I wish my kitchen had this level of temperature control, but it doesn't, and neither does yours, probably. Coming up later this hour, we'll talk about summer meals. New York Times cooking editor Margaux Laskey will join us with her list, and we want to know what you like to eat when turning on the oven is a no-go. Now let's get this hour started with Elyce Arons, the author of We Might Just Make It After All: My Best Friendship with Kate Spade.

[music]

Alison: Imagine five people crammed into an apartment in the 1990s who made money by waiting tables, and they came to New York in search of something. In that group were Elyce Arons and Katy Brosnahan, who would go on to become two of the founders of Kate Spade NYC, the multi-million dollar company that started as a pattern and some nylon. In Elyce's new memoir, We Might Just Make It After All: My Best Friendship with Kate Spade, she revisits the moment she met Katy in college, bonding over their love for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the two transferring from Kansas University to Arizona State University, to coming to New York City.

The book details how Kate Spade came together and the good times. They got married, they had kids, but they hit bumps too, separated by cities, company infighting, a takeover of the company, a rift between the two, being a female in the C-suite. When the dust settled and with Kate Spade sold to a big corporation, they took time off, but they weren't done yet. In 2016, Elyce and Katy started a new enterprise called Frances Valentine. Two years later, Katy Brosnahan Spade took her own life at 55.

It's taken seven years for Elyce to talk about the life of her best friend. A Rolling Stone review states, "The story is a powerful read for anyone who's admired Kate Spade's work over the years and has had an interest in fashion or is navigating their own journey through grief and is looking for comforting words from someone who's faced a similar loss." The book is titled, We Might Just Make It After All. It's out now. Elyce Arons joins us in studio. It is nice to meet you.

Elyce: Nice to meet you, too. Thanks for having me.

Alison: People know you as the CEO of Frances Valentine. You are elegant. People on Instagram saw your gorgeous house on the inside, and you've been here since 1986, but you are a farm girl.

Elyce: Yes, I grew up on a farm in Kansas, one of four daughters.

Alison: You had a steer named Harry?

Elyce: Yes.

[laughter]

Alison: Tell me something about you, even after all this time, that is still a farm girl. Something from that that you still relate to.

Elyce: I have a big vegetable garden in Long Island, and I'm out in it as often as I can be. I grow vegetables and flowers, and I love to cook. That all came from growing up on a farm.

Alison: One of the things that came up in the book repeatedly was work ethic.

Elyce: Yes.

Alison: I have to imagine that comes from the farm.

Elyce: It definitely does, and waking up super early every day. I just have never been able to stop doing it.

Alison: What does work ethic mean to you now?

Elyce: I'm a busy person anyway, but on the farm, it's seven days a week, because we raised Angus cattle. My mother would always say, on Christmas morning, we'd want to go open our stockings immediately, and she'd say, "No, no, go out and feed the cattle first, because they don't know it's your birthday, they don't know it's the weekend, and they don't know it's Christmas."

Alison: [laughs]

Elyce: We always had to take care of our chores first, and they were seven days a week.

Alison: When did you become interested in fashion?

Elyce: Really, since I was young. My mother is an illustrator, so she illustrated for all of the businesses in Wichita, for the Wichita Eagle Beacon, and really did all the fashion illustrations for so many companies there. She took a copy of Women's Wear Daily every day, and I would come home from school and read Women's Wear Daily. Then I had three older sisters who were very interested in fashion, as most teens are. They took a subscription to Vogue or Seventeen, and so I've just always loved it. We were constantly going to vintage shops way back when, and they weren't really called vintage shops.

Alison: Oh, they were not.

[laughter]

Elyce: They were secondhand stores. They were Salvation Armies. We'd find these treasures there. I just really had a love for all of those nostalgic pieces, and who wore them, and how they were made, and the craftsmanship that went into all of them, which I still do today.

Alison: Yes, you can find that in vintage stores or secondhand stores. It really is amazing when you turn them over, and you look at the seams and how they're made. You can really tell the difference between, eh, and something that's really valuable.

Elyce: Exactly. Exactly. The craftsmanship and all the details. When you find one, when someone's name is sewn into the back of the label, and you know that woman had all of these different experiences in that piece.

Alison: What made you decide to go off to college?

Elyce: My sisters had all gone their own separate ways, I was the youngest, and my father took me to a K State, KU game, hoping I would fall in love with K State, but the game was actually played at the University of Kansas, which is a sprawling, gorgeous, green, rolling hills campus. Of course, I fell in love with KU, and that was the place I wanted to go.

Alison: That is where you met Katy?

Elyce: Yes.

Alison: What initially drew you to Katy?

Elyce: We were just two doors down from each other. She was a B, and I was a C. My last name was Cox at the time. I had just come from a trip visiting my sister in New York, so I had on crazy purple parachute pants and pointy-toed leather boots that I'd bought on 8th Street, and I just thought I was the coolest thing in the world. Katy, on the other hand, had on a popped, collared polo shirt, Weejun loafers, and khaki shorts. She was the ultimate preppy person.

You would not think that we would be friends. We were both journalism majors, and we started walking to classes together and going to fraternity parties together. She was the funniest person I've ever met, but also kind-hearted and sweet and authentic. We just became close over a really short period of time.

Alison: What is something that you would want people to know about her, or it feels incomplete when they describe, "This is Kate Spade. This is what Kate Spade was like?" What are they missing?

Elyce: That she was the ultimate prankster and probably the funniest person I've ever met. Her brother-in-law, David Spade, always says she was the funniest person I've ever known. Because people didn't really get to know her deeply, they saw how great she was at design, and they really appreciated how kind and authentic and her Midwestern values, but they didn't get to know her well enough to see that funny side of her.

Alison: Someone texted in to say, many years ago, he and Kate Spade were in the same elevator in Tribeca. His young daughter was upset, and she comforted her. He said, "I saw Kate as an especially compassionate and caring young woman consoling my child." What a beautiful person.

Elyce: Yes, and she was, certainly.

Alison: Why did this feel like the right time for you to write a memoir?

Elyce: It took me many years. It was a painful time.

Alison: Of course.

Elyce: I still miss her every day. After about five years, I had had so many people ask me about our partnerships and our relationship, and to tell them all about her, and "oh, you should write a book." Every time I would launch into a funny story, they'd say, "Oh, you should write a book, you should write a book." I started two years ago and just started really writing down all the stories of the things I wanted to talk about. There's been so many speculations about why, and I didn't want to talk about how she left us. I wanted to talk about how she lived because there were so many great years in there, where she's so inspiring and funny and wonderful that I wanted people to know the real her.

Alison: This is a nuts and bolts kind of question, is you deal with her death by suicide right up front. You're very clear about it, very clear how hard it was for your family and for you. Then the rest of the book, most of the book, is about your life. Why did you decide to put it at the front of the book versus the end of the book?

Elyce: It's really the elephant in the room. I wanted to say it up front and in the author's note, I said that's not what this book is about. The people understood before they bought it what the book was really about. It was a celebration of her life and of our best friendship and the times we had together.

Alison: Who was the first person you showed the book to?

Elyce: Oh my goodness. My husband and I worked on it together. He was with me along for the whole ride, but family and friends, really close friends.

Alison: I read the first half, and I listened to the second half while I was gardening.

Elyce: [laughs]

Alison: You read the book. There are a couple of passages which sound like you might cry, or you might have been really choked up reading the book. What did it feel like to read it?

Elyce: I have read it so many times, and those places still choke me up today when I was recording it because I feel like if you're writing a memoir, it should be in your own voice if it's at all possible. As I was recording it, I did, I was crying, there were tears running down my cheeks, and I looked over at the producer and I said, "If you want me to rerecord that, I'll get myself together and I'll redo it. She said, "No, it's real. It's emotional. That's what this chapter is, and you should feel this way when you're reading it." She used the original.

Alison: A new memoir provides a portrait of Kate Spade's founders, Elyce Arons and Kate Spade. It's titled, We Might Just Make It After All: My Best Friendship with Kate Spade. Elyce Arons is with me now. You and Katy both wanted to become journalists, and you bonded over Mary Tyler Moore.

Elyce: [laughs]

Alison: What was it about Mary Tyler Moore? I loved Mary Tyler Moore. What did you love about Mary Tyler Moore?

Elyce: I think for my generation of women and probably many others, Mary was at a time when women didn't have these kinds of roles. She started her career in a predominantly male-dominated field. She was confident and a modern woman, but she was also very stylish and funny and fun, and she had great friends and a great apartment, and we wanted to be like Mary. Journalism seemed like a route to go, and it was because of her that we really went into that field. That's when we started talking, right when Katy and I met, that we had that in common. We thought it was a fluke, but of course, every woman our age--

[laughter]

Alison: Everybody who's in our vintage was like, "Mary Tyler Moore is the best." I know.

Elyce: We got to meet her at one point-

Alison: Oh, my gosh.

Elyce: -after we started Kate Spade. Her agent called and said, "Mary would like to see your handbags." This was our first office on 29th Street, so it wasn't very nice. I said, "Okay, she could go to Saks or Barneys." She said, "No, no, no. Mary wants to come and see everything at your office." Cut to a couple of days later, Mary Tyler Moore herself walks into our office. Of course, I was speechless. I didn't even know what to say to her because it was like this icon is walking into the room. She was lovely. She couldn't have been nicer, so thoughtful. I said, "You are the reason that we even got into journalism, you're the reason we started this business." She said, "Wasn't that show just great and full of such good values and just fun?"

Alison: When you think about that show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, how did it shape your ideas about feminism and what you could do with your life?

Elyce: It told me and my generation of women that we could make it and that we could make our own path and forge our own way in a career that we wanted. Thus, the title of the book, We Might Just Make It After All, is one of the words or the lines from the song.

Alison: In the book, you share that Katy loves Susan Lucci's look as Erica Kane-

[laughter]

Alison: All My Children. She said, "Someday I'm going to be able to dress like that." This surprised you a little bit, why?

Elyce: It did. Because she was such a preppy person at the time, but we had never been outside of our worlds in the Midwest. When she looked at Susan Lucci, she saw someone who was a powerful woman and dressed the way she wanted to, and had tailored clothing and really beautiful things. That's really what she was talking about.

Alison: When Andy came into the conversation, Andy Spade, who Kate Spade married, it seemed like it was the three of you-

Elyce: Yes.

Alison: -going out?

Elyce: They included me in everything. I don't know if I would have been so generous if I had a new boyfriend. They were really thoughtful, always trying to find me a boyfriend.

[laughter]

Elyce: They really included me all the time. They never wanted to make me feel like a third wheel.

Alison: Did having such a good relationship with the two of them, did that help your business? Was it a moment of pause, like, "These are my two great friends. I don't know if I want to go into business with them?"

Elyce: We were all in from the very beginning. I didn't pause. Probably most people should pause, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend being in business with your best friends, but it worked great for us. I think it's because all four of us shared the same values, and we trusted each other, we were very loyal to each other, and we stuck by each other the whole time.

Alison: We've got a call, Oman Sharon from Queens, who wants to share something with you. Hi, Sharon. Thank you for making the time to call All Of It.

Sharon: Hi. I just wanted to say, as a woman of color, I worked in the banking industry, as a very male-dominated place, without any people of color. I was a corporate trainer. What happens is, I bought four bags, Kate Spade bags. I loved the style. I carried them so proudly, because I said I was able to afford them, and I just loved Kate Spade bags. As a testimony to both you and her, I am just telling you how much they meant to me, that I've gifted two of them to my daughter, to give her strength, in her male-dominated world, to say that this is a testimony to a beautiful woman, who was probably an outstanding lead in a male-dominated world. Thank you so much.

Elyce: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. There are so many stories like yours, Sharon, because when I go out to trunk shows for Frances Valentine, women come up and tell me their stories about their first Kate Spade bag. It was a time in their lives, much like her story, when they were just starting out, and they treated themselves for the very first time, something special. It was a designer bag, but it was accessible enough. You saved up for it, and you bought it with your own money. It meant you had arrived on your own terms.

I think when women look back at those bags, it wasn't necessarily about the fabric or the style of the bag or the design, it's about what that thing meant to them, personally. I know when Katy and I finally made enough money where we could go out and treat ourselves to something special, those items took on so much more significance, because we were able to buy them with our own money.

Alison: My guest is Elyce Arons. We're talking about a book, We Might Just Make It After All: My Best Friendship With Kate Spade. Lest you think it happened automatically, as I mentioned, there were five people in one [chuckles] room, one apartment. You just started in New York. I'm going to ask you to read from Chapter 6 in the book. This is when you first got to New York, and you realized you had to make a living to survive here.

Elyce: Yes, all the bills.

Alison: [chuckles]

Elyce: "I knew early on that New York City was right for me, and I was there to stay. My salary at Chroma Copy was decent, but I would need more money long term if I was going to get my own place and be able to save anything. I started asking around for part-time jobs where I could work at night. A block away from Willow's was the Beacon Theater on Broadway and 75th Street, and underneath that was the China Club, one of the hottest clubs at the time.

I'd been there, and I'd heard that David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Stevie Nicks, and other huge stars of the day would occasionally jump on stage and do a set. A lot of Cafe Central regulars went to the China Club after hours. Willow, my sister, went occasionally and would come home with stories about dancing with Mikhail Baryshnikov or spinning around on the dance floor with John Travolta. While it wasn't really a dance club, when it got late, people would often move tables and create a dance floor.

Her co-worker, Christina, also ran the coat room at the China Club and offered to introduce me to the owners. I wanted that job. I could pay off my student loans at hyper speed, cover the rent, and save a few bucks. So I applied to be a coat check girl at the China Club. I was hired as a cocktail waitress instead. I'd waited tables my whole life, and I thought I knew what to expect. The issue wasn't the hours, which were definitely rough. I started at 11:00 PM, sold drinks until 4:00 AM, and woke up at 7:30 to get to Chroma Copy by 9:00.

At the end of each shift, I was barely able to speak from screaming at customers to be overheard over the music. Men would hold onto my waist or wrist while ordering a drink. Being casually groped was part of the job. The bosses told me I would get used to it. I really didn't, though, nor did I know any of the other waitresses who did.

There was a lot of cocaine, and the customers barely tried to be discreet. They needed some of that added firepower to party and dance until 4:00 on a Monday, which was one of our most popular nights, and get to work the next day. The China Club was the worst job I ever had."

Alison: [laughs]

Elyce: "The primary reason the job was so bad was the ownership. They made us wear aerobics-inspired leotards and constantly pushed all the servers to show more bum and cleavage. My response was to wear crewneck sweaters on top of leotards. I stuck it out because the tips were so good."

Alison: That's Elyce Aron's reading from her book. The '90s, you look back on them with great fondness, but it was a time when things were allowed. Men were allowed to grab you by the waist. You were told to put up with it. How did you put up with it? How did you use it as fuel to get to where you wanted to go?

Elyce: I think back then, we just did because we had to. If you said anything, you were fired. It was just the way it was. Thank goodness it's different now, and people can speak up. We have training, and we know how to behave. I think it allowed us to creatively dodge and weave so many situations where you knew something was going to be an issue. Luckily, our business was really a women's business, and we didn't have a lot of men to deal with necessarily at that time.

Alison: That was interesting, I thought, in the book of how many women worked at Kate Spade, and how you got along until the corporate interests got in the way. What were the early days like, and then how did things shift when corporate interests and people bought into the company generally?

Elyce: The early days were terrific. When you have a hard time, you don't really remember the hard time so much. You remember the good part of it, and all of these great things were happening to us at the beginning where, when Katy won the CFDA award, the Council of Fashion Designers of America, for accessories, our first orders from Barneys and Charivari and Saks Fifth Avenue, all of that was so thrilling and exciting. Coming up with the money to produce things, that was a different story. It was hard. We had hard times, but honestly, if I think back, those were some of the best times because we had to make it work, and we had to get creative.

As far as how that all happened later with the corporation, Neiman Marcus ended up buying us in 2006 and then sold it to Liz Claiborne, we were only involved for about six months after they purchased the company. It was a time we had agreed to stay on for the transition period, and things changed a lot during that time. They still treated us very respectfully as the founders. However, we noticed things starting to change, and we were happy to leave when we did.

Alison: There was a woman, though, who gave you a really hard time-

Elyce: [laughs]

Alison: -gave you, specifically, a really hard time. As you look back on it, do you understand what was going on?

Elyce: Yes, it's office politics, which I never thought would happen in my own company, but it did. For her, I'm sure she thought she was doing the right thing for the business or for herself to get further ahead, but I just wasn't anticipating it at my own company. We resolved it, and she moved on to another company. We were the four of us, happily ever after again, until we sold in 2006.

Alison: Once you decided to start Frances Valentine, you took some time off, you became a bigwig at your kid's school-

[laughter]

Alison: -a whole thing. What made you want to get back in the game to start, not at ground zero, because you had some finances now, but you had to start somewhere?

Elyce: Right. When we sold Kate Spade, I was a little bit nervous about not having something to do, but I had three small children, so I really did fill my time with my kids. I have no illusions about it. I'm one of the luckiest people in the world. I got to have both. I got to have a business career, and I got to be with my kids. Then I got involved in their school and was PA president for a long time, and then the board chair of the school because we were building a new high school at the time, which was a really great thing for me because I learned so much about it.

Katy and I both missed fashion, and we missed creating and designing things. We started talking in 2014 about getting into the business again. We talked to Andy and our other partner, Pamela, about it. They had both started their own companies, and so encouraged Katy and me to start Frances Valentine. We started with handbags and shoes and launched the business on Valentine's Day in 2016, and we're off to the races and starting our business again. We were super excited.

Alison: Who did you have in your mind as your customer at Frances Valentine?

Elyce: The same woman who loved our original design. It's a woman who loves joyful pieces, who likes to feel confident in what she's wearing, and feel really good every day.

Alison: Got a nice text. "Katy and I were teenagers together in Kansas City. She was sweet, genuine, and kind. It was years ago, but she's sorely missed. I think of her all the time. Elyce, I look forward to reading your book, Heart."

Elyce: Oh, thank you so much. I'll be back in Kansas City in the fall.

Alison: Your book is also-- It's a really good book. It's a business book as well. There's a subtext of business underneath it.

Elyce: There's definitely a subtext, yes.

Alison: For someone who is listening to this right now, who has a great idea, who's behind their sewing machine, is thinking, "I've got the next big thing. I've got the next Telfar bag."

Elyce: [laughs]

Alison: What practical advice would you give someone?

Elyce: I would say work for companies you admire and learn how to do everything that they do. In smaller companies, you can obviously learn so much more because everyone's doing everything. Make sure that your product is the best it can be and that it's different than anything else out there, and then just go for it.

Alison: Has anybody not asked you something that you've just wanted to talk about this book?

Elyce: [laughs]

Alison: I know you've been on book tour, but I wonder, there's always something that somebody hasn't asked yet.

Elyce: Oh my goodness. That is a really-- One thing that did come up and I didn't have an opportunity to answer it, was there is a letter that Katy wrote me in the book. It's very heartfelt, and I cry every time I read it. I really hesitated about including it because it is such a personal letter. One of the things that really made me put it in the book, after all, was because I wanted people to really authentically hear her voice. It's in that letter, and it just goes to show what a fabulously wonderful best friend she was. It's why I put the personal letter in there. Normally, I wouldn't have done it, and I really hesitated about it. When you come across the letter, when you're reading it, you'll understand why.

Alison: The name of the book is We Might Just Make It After All: My Best Friendship with Kate Spade. It is by Elyce Arons. Elyce, thanks for coming to the studio.

Elyce: Thank you so much for having me.