Andy Spade

Glenn O’Brien

pajamas

interview by GLENN O’BRIEN
portrait of Glenn O’Brien by RICHARD KERN

 

I met Andy Spade when he was a creative director at ChiatDay advertising. One day I was called in to freelance and there was Andy Spade, an apparent preppie who soon revealed a uniquely brilliant and subversive mind. Soon Andy and his wife Kate started Kate Spade and became handbag moguls, while remaining exactly the same: brilliant but down-to-earth party-people renegades. When Andy Warhol talked about Business Art he was imagining Andy Spade.

When they sold Kate Spade, Andy could have done anything, but he still had the agency bug and he founded Partners and Spade: a marketing firm by day, a boutique/gallery on weekends. One day Andy said: “I hate clients. I want to have my own product.” So he did it, inventing a brand new brand, Sleepy Jones —…