Lots of people on Twitter were really upset by Kate Spade’s death. Can you tell me more about her?

David, by email

Suicide is always horrific, but the Kate Spade brand is predicated on happiness, sunshine, bright colours, gentility, sweetness. As the actor Mindy Kaling tweeted on Tuesday: “You couldn’t walk into her boutiques and not smile.” Spade and her husband, Andy, repeatedly claimed in their interviews, before they sold her eponymous label just over a decade ago, that the brand was an extension of Spade’s personality, all cheerfulness and ease. Certainly, Spade projected this in interviews and photos, where she played a smart double game of coming across like a cheerful 50s fantasy and an astute, modern businesswoman. The sudden glimpse into the blackness that lay behind all that, and the realisation of how hard Spade must have worked to keep it hidden for the sake of her brand – coming across as happy and dynamic when often she must have felt otherwise – was shocking and heartbreaking.

So many labels are based on the appeal of the designer’s personality, from Karl Lagerfeld to Phoebe Philo, but Kate Spade was different. For a start, the brand is aspirational, but far more accessible than most designer names, which is why a Kate Spade bag – available for a fraction of the price of a Chanel one – was the first smart handbag for so many women. Spade was not about elitism: when you enter her shops, you don’t feel intimidated – you feel welcomed.

Her original adverts, which shot the brand to fame, featured women taking their children to school, or talking with their friends, or eating with their husband – but always looking perfect. She coined the filtered, Instagrammed world 20 years before Instagram was invented. She was a deeply creative woman who devised an entire aesthetic. She seemed to live like her brand: you never saw pictures of Spade looking sour-faced at black-tie celebrity parties, as you do with most designers. Instead, you saw her smiling and holding her husband’s hand as they walked through the Upper East Side in New York City. We thought we knew her.

Spade is not as well known in Britain as she is in the US, where her brand is huge (only last year it was sold to Coach for $2.4bn). That is probably because her look is one of idealised Americana. The clothes – all bright and feminine and chic as heck – feel as if they are from the 50s, but with far more flattering cuts than anything anyone was wearing in the Eisenhower era. Many of Michelle Obama’s most popular outfits, for example, were from Kate Spade. Whenever I am in south-west London with some time to spare, I pop into the Kate Spade shop just behind Peter Jones in Chelsea and look lustfully at the racks of pretty cardigans and chic patterned dresses; I imagine that, if I bought that retro box bag, I too would look like a young Jacqueline Bouvier.

Spade created clothes for women who prefer style to fashion and she treated them with respect. She taught them the joy of simple aesthetics. She understood what women want and gave them better versions thereof, because she had old-fashioned taste, but a modern eye. That is a canny combination.

Spade emerged at a time when a woman running her own eponymous brand was relatively rare. Sure, there were Donna Karan, Carolina Herrera and Miuccia Prada – and Coco Chanel before them – but they were very different propositions. Spade was half a step closer to the mass market and there were few named female designers around then making clothes for that demographic. That is another reason so many women felt close to her. Hers was one of the few female names in our wardrobes.

So many women have been sharing stories online about their first Kate Spade handbag, like music fans reminiscing about the first time they heard a song by a recently deceased singer – and that is how it should be. She was a part of our lives and part of the cultural landscape for a generation. She made us feel that the perfect life was eminently achievable. How devastating to learn it felt exactly the opposite to her.

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org