NEW YORK —Kate Spade, a fashion designer known for her sleek handbags, was found hanged in her Park Avenue apartment Tuesday in an apparent suicide, law enforcement officials said. She was 55.

Spade’s body was found by housekeeping at about 10:20 a.m. Her husband and business partner Andy Spade was in the house at the time. It’s not clear how long she had been dead. The medical examiner will perform an autopsy.

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The officials said she was found with a red scarf around her neck attached to a doorknob. The couple’s 13-year-old daughter was at school, and officials said a note was found at the scene telling her it was not her fault. The officials were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

A crime scene truck was parked outside their building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and barriers had been set up to keep back reporters and gawkers who were arriving to the building.

The company she founded, Kate Spade New York, now has over 140 retail shops and outlet stores across the U.S. and more than 175 shops internationally.

Julia Curry, a spokesperson for the company told the New York Times in a statement that while “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.”

Kate Spade was born Katherine Brosnahan and grew up in Kansas City, Mo.

She studied journalism at Arizona State University before moving to New York. She landed a job at Mademoiselle, rising through the ranks to senior fashion editor/accessories in 1991. While scouring the market for fashion shoots she noticed a lack of stylish, well-priced bags.

“I said to myself, ‘Where’s a bag that I can afford, that’s simple, that’s not saying too much and that I won’t be embarrassed to pull out every season?’,” she told the Toronto Star in an interview two decades ago.

Spade launched her company with husband Andy in their apartment in 1993. She started the company based on six shapes of bags that she thought every working woman needed. It created a smash.

Kate Spade's body was removed from her Park Avenue apartment Tuesday after she was found hanged in the bedroom in an apparent suicide, according to law enforcement officials. (The Associated Press)

“I grew up in the Midwest, where you have to have it (a fashion item) because you like it, not because you’re supposed to have it,” she told The Associated Press in 2004. “For our customers, fashion is in the right place in their life. It’s an adornment, not an obsession.”

From the original boxy handbags, she expanded into shoes, luggage and other accessories, as well as a home line, stationery, and three books. Spade won multiple awards from the Council of Fashion Designers of America and was named a “giant of design” by House Beautiful magazine.

“As an accessory, a great bag that takes the outfit somewhere else is interesting,” she told the AP in a 2000 interview.

Robert Ott, chair of the school of fashion at Ryerson University, said he watched in the 1990s “with keen interest this new phenomenon of an upstart accessories company that quickly became best-known for handbags”

“This was about someone recognizing the changing landscape and understanding her customers’ needs,” Ott wrote in an email to the Toronto Star from London where he’s attending Graduate Fashion Week.

“Completely fresh and unexpected, Kate Spade’s quickly captured the market and more importantly opened up an entirely new segment that today is driving the sales of accessories and lifestyle products.”

As her brand expanded, “the fun, colorful, bright designs she created added an element of cheerfulness others have tried to emulate,” said Deidra Arrington, associate professor of fashion design and merchandising at Virginia Commonwealth University.

“She was a visionary.”

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One obvious measure of her influence was the number of counterfeit Kate Spade bags one could find on the streets, Arrington said.

“Most women remember their first Kate Spade bag. I still have mine.”

Indeed, on social media, many women were recalling their first Spade bag.

“My grandmother gave me my first Kate Spade bag when I was in college,” Chelsea Clinton wrote on Twitter. “I still have it.”

Jenna Bush Hager wrote: “I will never forget the first Kate Spade bag I got for Christmas in college.”

Spade was not only about bags: she would expand into shoes, apparel, luggage and other accessories, and stationery.

“Everyone loves to get a letter,” Spade told the AP in 2006, explaining that she never used computers and had her staff print out emails.

“I love sending them. I love getting them.”

Spade walked away from the company in 2007, a year after it was acquired from the Neiman Marcus Group for $125 million by the company then known as Liz Claiborne Inc.

Coach, now known as Tapestry, bought the Kate Spade brand last year for $2.4 billion, seeking to broaden its appeal.

Meanwhile, Spade and her husband — brother of comedian David Spade — started a new handbag company a few years ago, Frances Valentine. And she changed her name to Katherine Noel Frances Valentine Brosnahan Spade.

“She alone didn’t change the handbag world,” tweeted fashion designer Kenneth Cole, “but she was an inspiring accessory. #KateSpade #RIP”

In 1997, she spoke to then-Toronto Star fashion editor Bernadette Morra, revealing herself in a half-hour interview as unpretentious, free-spirited and a little bit eccentric — just like her handbags.

“I do simple things with lots of personality,” Spade said at the time. “(The simplicity) was a problem at the beginning because people wanted metal, hardware and patches. But that’s not our thing.”

Spade said she likes “things that endure because that’s the way I shop. If I buy a cashmere sweater I want it to be something I wear for a long time. That’s how I feel about this company. I want it to be like a fashion version of L.L. Bean, never in or out.”

One of her mottos was — you don’t have to be nasty to be successful.

Outside a Kate Spade store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue on Tuesday, Dorothy Ruderman, who said she was a fan of the designer, compared Spade’s death to that of Robin Williams, who hanged himself in 2014.

“You see someone who kind of made a career off of making people smile,” she said. “It’s sad.”

In addition to her husband, Spade is survived by her daughter Frances “Bea” Beatrix.

If you or someone you know need help, call Toronto Distress Centre at 416-408-4357. If you require emergency assistance please go to the nearest hospital or call 911.