Kate Spade‘s older sister Reta Saffo is speaking out following the fashion designer’s tragic death at the age of 55.
Spade was found dead of an apparent suicide at her New York City apartment on Tuesday (July 5) and Saffo doesn’t seem surprised by the devastating news.
“I will say this was not unexpected by me. I’d flown out to Napa and NYC several times in the past 3-4 years to help her to get the treatment she needed (inpatient hospitalization). She was always a very excitable little girl and I felt all the stress/pressure of her brand (KS) may have flipped the switch where she eventually became full-on manic depressive…” Saffo wrote in an email to the Kansas Star.
“I’d come so VERY close to getting her to go in for treatment (to the same place Catherine Zeta-Jones went for her successful bipolar treatment program). I’d spoken with them on the phone (not telling them exactly who the patient would be). They agreed to fly in and talk with her and take her with them to the treatment center,” she said, adding that “nothing ever came of it.”
“After numerous attempts, I finally let go,” Saffo wrote. “Sometimes you simply cannot SAVE people from themselves! One of the last things she said to me was, ‘Reta, I know you hate funerals and don’t attend them, but for me would you PLEASE come to MINE, at least. Please!’ I know she perhaps had a plan, but she insisted she did not.”
Read what the family said in a statement.
