A ‘90s Kate Spade New York Bag Makes a Comeback
A deep dive! Urban Outfitters collaborates with the brand that took over young women's closets.
A collaboration between Urban Outfitters and Kate Spade New York…this post is brought to you by both brands. A fascinating partnership! And guess what? I was able to go into the archives and talk about counterfeiting, the genius behind the tiny label placement, and exactly why Kate Spade New York changed handbag history starting in the mid-’90s.
Last week, Kate Spade New York collaborated with Urban Outfitters to release a new shoulder bag inspired by one of its most classic designs. The silhouette: no-nonsense ‘90s to its core. The fabrication: hard-bodied, shaped like an extended wallet, rendered in a taut canvas for an aerodynamic sleekness. The story: it was first released in 1993, the year the late Kate Spade launched her eponymous brand.
The combination of fabric and shape here is key to understanding the era’s perpetually appealing minimalist ease: a need-nothing size for a glam night out on the town but rendered in Kevlar-strength material that makes it casual enough for day. The new collaboration has a shoulder bag for each personality: PowerPoint sunset, retro polka dot, and pure Breakfast at Tiffany’s black. These gently updated versions (the zipper has been changed) are going for $188, a price reassuringly reminiscent of the ‘90s, when shoppers snapped up Spade’s bags for prices between $150 and $450.
It seems certain that the ‘90s-and-noughties-obsessed Gen-Z will love this Urban Outfitters reissue—original Kate Spade New York bags are part of the latest wave of throwback favorites to be recovered from the resale ether. A retail resurgence was only a matter of time: these bags have a big history. Over 30 years ago, before Gen-Z was out of the womb, Canal Street was exploding with “Kate Spade” purses—and if Vogue was the holy grail of “making it” for a brand, Canal Street dupes were the real milestone of commercial success. You really had to be somebody to be worth it to copy, and Kate Spade New York had quickly become a nationwide known entity— while the tri-state milieu hit the counterfeit curb, knock-off bags cropped up across the country at suburban “purse parties,” where moms would sell bootlegs from their living rooms.
The bags, with their straightforward shapes and inexpensive materials, were relatively easy to counterfeit. (Actual Kate Spade New York bags at that time were made in Italy; the counterfeit bags were manufactured in China, with the Kate Spade New York labels shipped separately and sewn onto the bag later.) Eventually, the brand hired the powerhouse lawyer Barbara Kolsun—dubbed the “Pit Bull Who Lunges at Brand Counterfeiters” by The New York Times— to combat the issue. (Note: Shipping separate counterfeit labels later became a federal crime.) But even a vibrant illegal counterfeit culture didn’t chip away too badly at the brand’s success. It may have even helped. The overarching message, after all, was just as simple as their designs: everyone, everywhere wanted a Kate Spade New York bag.
So why was the bag so sought after? Why was it so feverishly copied? “Bags like this didn’t really exist. A handbag, or what a handbag should be, or what a tote bag should be,” former Vogue fashion writer Pamela Lopez tells me. In 1996, Lopez penned the first major piece about the brand for the magazine, and in talking to me, she likened Spade’s ageless design aesthetic to another all-timer: the classic L.L. Bean canvas Boat and Tote. Spade’s bags were clean and modern with a hint of preppy reserve, and most importantly, relatively affordable, she says: “functional, but understandable for the average American girl.”
For those who grew up in this era, Kate Spade New York bags carry some tender memories: coming-of-age milestones received for Sweet Sixteens or graduations; structured things worn to the office to carry portfolios or to store baby bottles. One stylist told me about her tote from high school (“It was THE bag. I had it in navy and brown”) while a fashion writer reminisced about the tiny purse she got for her Bat Mitzvah. The bags hit the celebrity-verse, too. Winona carried one. Meg Ryan, also. Carolyn Bessette had a simple black backpack in nylon. There’s a great image of late ‘90s-era Gwyneth Paltrow in a shroud of too-cool dark hues with then-beau Ben Affleck traipsing through the airport, clutching a light canvas Kate Spade New York top handle, in a look that would work just as well today. These aren’t bags bubbling with logos that will become passe, awkward shapes that will be considered un-chic or “over” in the next month or year. “It was a functional, geometric shape, that—especially when you saw it on a retail floor—looked joyful and fun but then also useful and stylish,” says Lopez.
“My goal was to create bags that I could never find when I worked as an editor, bags that were somewhere between L.L. Bean and Prada in both design and price,” Spade told Lopez for Vogue in 1996, on the cusp of her winning the CFDA’s Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent in accessories design. Born and bred in Kansas, she moved to New York City in 1986 with “seven dollars in her pocket” and began working at Mademoiselle as an accessories editor. After leaving her editorial job, she created mock-ups of six different bag designs using construction paper and tape, then schlepping out to East New York to find a factory that could make them, using money she and her husband Andy Spade withdrew from their 401Ks to fund the production. Some of her early iterations were made from burlap used for potato sacks. (Charmingly, she would continue to use burlap throughout her collections, even when she could certainly afford finer materials). Needless to say, it paid off: In 1999, Spade and her husband sold 56% of their shares to Neiman Marcus for $34 million.
Spade’s bags came at the right time, hitting a nerve for those seeking functional, slick bags. Women in the workplace were only growing in number. The bags slotted nicely into the moment: mid- and late-‘90s minimalist with flickers of millennium maximalism on the horizon that worked for a variety of ages and demographics. Look to the brand’s first creation, the Sam bag, a wickedly angular but sensible tote that harkened to a polished, ladylike era of the ‘50s. Then there was the no-frills shoulder bag. A messenger bag. A dainty wicker bag with echoes of Jane Birkin. No fussy bells and whistles or baroque overdesigns. “It was this moment of that designer status bag like Prada, Tom Ford for Gucci, and Chanel,” says Lopez, “but Kate and her team created these bags that were approachable status; almost like an Americana status symbol.” And for what it’s worth, she adds, “the Vogue market editors were carrying that nylon tote.” The fabrics were easy, too. There was a tote fashioned out of supple Novasuede modeled after a shaving kit, but otherwise, Spade never used much leather, instead opting for nylon, satin, and linen.
While the bags themselves are era-defining classics, their most spectacular detail—and a masterclass in marketing— is also its smallest: the label’s little black tag, sewn on the outside, front and center, all lowercase. Spade initially wanted to put the petite label inside the bag, but instead, she placed it on the outside. “I remember thinking there was something missing. I want something for my eye to go…and that was it,” said Spade in an interview with CBS in 1999. The pared-back label was familiar and not overwhelming; simple yet polished. Sweet, even: The New York Times called the label placement akin to “the effect is like Mom sewing name tapes on your camp clothes.” Unmistakable and identifiable.
Nowhere was Spade’s genius more evident than in her relationship with her customers. In 1996, Spade’s business partner Pamela Bell persuaded the designer to add compartments to the popular shoulder strap bag to make it more baby-friendly, which found fans in Madonna and Christie Brinkley: The New York Times deemed “the incognito diaper bag.” In the Kate Spade New York-verse, there’s a bag for everyone, at any age, and anywhere. The amount of DMs I received when I posted an image of the new releases of the shoulder bags was incredible. Nostalgia aside, shoppers remain as interested as ever in accessories that make their lives easier, more stylish, more seamless, a little more cheerful. The point of the bags was always the life you’d live with them: a now iconic book, Contents (2000), by Andy and Kate Spade, showed the innards of different women’s bags as insights into their inner lives and personalities, the original “what’s in my bag,” now a frequent trope used by a slew of brands and magazines. There are photographs of editor Helen Gurley Brown’s leopard print tissues and Polly Mellon’s cheap Goody Comb. Photographer Mary Ellen Mark kept not one but two Nokia cell phones in her bag! Not all of those bags were by Kate Spade New York, but all of the plucky, charming mentality was. For those interested, you’d be lucky to find the book today for less than $175—though, for a few dollars more, you could just get yourself a bag.
Watch NEVERWORNS with Balenciaga’s biggest collector Eden Pritikin below. A new episode with Plum Sykes is coming soon.
Such a great piece - I worked in the soho shops for a while back in the day, and it was such a great time… so many lovely people were involved with the brand, and the alumnus stretch far and wide! But I hope people just buy the vintage bags - much cooler and most assuredly better crafted. There are a million out there on eBay etc if you just look… ❤️
In 2001, I bought a fake Kate Spade bag in Washington DC, where I was doing an internship. I remember that even that fake bag cost more than I wanted to spend as a poor college student, but carrying it with me on the Metro to my internship every day made me feel so grown up and glamorous. I’d love to find and purchase a real (vintage!) one, but I’m not sure if it was even a knock off of a real style (I’ve never seen such a bag from Kate Spade, though I haven’t looked too hard). That purse held such significance for me that, although I would never carry it or any other fake today, it still lives in the closet of my childhood bedroom. Every so often, I see it there, and it gives me warm and happy memories of my younger self.