In the six years that Kate helmed her company, the Kate Spade brand ballooned in clout and ubiquity, due largely to how special it felt to carry her bag compared to anything else. The specific contours of that name — kate spade (mind the lowercase) — were as much a part of the brand’s allure as the discrete, parcel-like nylon bag the tiny labels came on. After all, in a decade of logos and branding, Kate Spade handbags were among the first to feature absolutely nothing. For many of us who associated wealth and success with interlocking C’s, F’s and LV’s, to see the sublime blankness of a Kate Spade backpack or shoulder bag was like waking up from a boring dream. Once you learned what to call it — and who was responsible — the name Kate Spade became one of the worst-kept shibboleths of the ‘90s that also contained fashion’s greatest secret: that you could have taste without being snobby, that you could love fashion and not its frills, that you could be the kind of person who needs to keep their papers on them, to bring their lunch, and to require the constant accessibility of a day-planner, but look goddamn chic doing it all. Indeed, a woman could be many things. And in fact, our "contradictions" were not so much quirks and whimsies but rather evidence that women have long outgrown their labels.