Fashion designer Kate Spade — who created the must-have handbag of the 1990s and turned it into an accessories empire — committed suicide Tuesday in her Park Avenue apartment, authorities said.
Spade, 55, hanged herself with a red scarf from a doorknob, sources said.
She was found by a housekeeper at 10:10 a.m. and pronounced dead a short time later, according to police.
“She was a beautiful person in every way imaginable and it is a devastating loss,” her sister Eve Brosnahan told The Post by phone from her home in California. “She was an angel.”
Spade left behind a note that addressed her 13-year-old daughter, Frances Beatrix Spade — and suggested her husband, Andrew Spade, would know why she took her own life, sources said.
“This has nothing to do with you,” the note to Frances reads in part, according to sources. “Don’t feel guilty. Ask your dad.”
Police believe the suicide was “over family problems . . . in her relationship,” a police source told The Post.
Spade, born Katherine Noel Brosnahan, leaves behind her husband — the brother of comic actor David Spade — and their daughter. She was the aunt of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” star Rachel Brosnahan.
“We are all devastated by today’s tragedy. We loved Kate dearly and will miss her terribly. We would ask that our privacy be respected as we grieve during this very difficult time,” the Spade family said in a statement.
Andrew was at the couple’s home at 850 Park Ave., on the corner of East 77th Street, when the suicide was discovered, but Frances was at school.
No criminality is suspected, NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said at an unrelated press conference.
“At this point, there was a note left. The contents of that note, as well as the physical state of the apartment and the comments of the witness, lend to the credibility that it is an apparent suicide,” he said.
A Kansas City, Mo., native, Spade moved to New York in the 1980s to work as an editor at Mademoiselle magazine, and began her titular brand, Kate Spade, with a small collection of eye-catching colorful nylon handbags in 1993.
The company was a runaway success, with its products quickly making their way into high-end boutiques and onto the arms of celebrities, and had racked up $28 million in sales by the end of 1998, according to a New York Times report at the time.
The Spades sold the majority of their empire to Neiman Marcus in 1999 for a reported $34 million, and then the rest in 2006 for another $59 million.
But the brand continued to boom without them, and Coach bought the company for $2.4 billion last year.
In 2016, Spade and her husband launched a new label called Frances Valentine, which she named in part for her daughter, according to a 2015 Women’s Wear Daily interview.
Ken Grant, a concierge at the brand’s Sixth Avenue office, fondly recalled the doting mom.
“When you see her with her daughter, you could see the love between them. I always told her, ‘You did a damn good job with her,’ ” he said.
On Tuesday, the company Kate Spade released a statement on the “incredibly sad” news.
“Although Kate has not been affiliated with the brand for more than a decade, she and her husband and creative partner, Andy, were the founders of our beloved brand. Kate will be dearly missed. Our thoughts are with Andy and the entire Spade family at this time,” the company said.
Additional reporting by Georgett Roberts and Ruth Brown