Interview

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He is one of the great underknown geniuses of Western civilization. He’s been a copywriter, a creative director, a fashion mogul, an activist, an art patron, a publisher, a consultant, a gallerist, and an artist in his own right. Along with his wife, Kate, he created the Kate Spade brand, then he did an amazing men’s sideline, Jack Spade. When he and Kate sold the business, Andy Spade stepped back—for about a minute. Since then, he has done some wild and crazy advertising for clients such as The Village Voice, invented a new retail concept, The J.Crew Liquor Store, opened an art venue, Half Gallery, and now has created the next step, Partners & Spade, a sort of combo ad agency, creative consultancy, and art gallery boutique in a storefront on Great Jones Street in Manhattan’s NoHo. When I visited, there were birds living in the window and a sign that says they sell guns. (The birds are now gone. The sign was moved inside after a police visit.) They sell art and books and strange collections. Where else can you buy objects bearing the Lehman Brothers logo, including mugs, golf balls, ear-warmers, a beer cozy, a rain poncho, and an instant onesie? Now Andy is talking about opening a combination coffee shop and bicycle repair shop. He’s an inspiration and one of my favorite people on this or any planet. We had our typical NoHo morning—talking over coffee at Gemma, the restaurant at Eric Goode and Sean MacPherson’s Bowery Hotel, then strolling down Great Jones to Partners & Spade.

GLENN O’BRIEN: So what’s the idea behind Partners & Spade?

ANDY SPADE: Well . . .

O’BRIEN: No, first of all, why isn’t it Spade & Partners?

SPADE: It’s Partners & Spade because it’s always something like Spade & Partners . . .

O’BRIEN: Or Russ & Daughters.

SPADE: Russ & Daughters . . . Exactly. Obedient Sons. I think the real reason is that it puts more pressure on the partners. [O’Brien laughs] They don’t really exist. But if anything goes awry, my name’s behind them, and everybody knows that the person with the biggest ego puts their name first. So if mine’s second, and we have a bad moment, I’ll blame it on these partners, who are really just made up of everyone with whom we collaborate. So the idea of it was that my actual partner, Anthony Sperduti, and I put it together, but we liked it being a completely collaborative business, where, rather than having a big staff of employees, we have a portfolio of people we know who can work on different projects. So half of the space is a studio that does work for clients like J.Crew and The Village Voice and Indigo Books in Canada, and the other half of the space we use, actually, to just do collaborations with different people. A lot of my friends don’t see themselves as artists, but they either collect something or they make something that nobody has ever seen before. So it’s like everybody in a band who kind of has a side project that they want to pursue. For us, this is a side project. Mike Mills [the artist and film director] wanted to do a fluxus piece, not a film right now. He had this idea about 1971, when he was 5, so we said, “You can do it here.” It’s more creative for the collaborators because the gallery isn’t requiring them to do paintings that are $5,000. We can justify the space by doing our studio work.

O’BRIEN: Some of these things you’re exhibiting are, well, unusual.

SPADE: There are a lot of things that you see in the world . . . We have a collection of gloves that have been run over by trucks that a friend named JP Williams collects. They are really beautiful. They look like sculpture. And he has a hundred pictures of them—we’re making a book out of them. It’s all that kind of ephemera, things that exist that no one really looks at unless it’s put to them in a certain way. A friend of yours has, I think, a huge collection of sock monkeys. I’d love to show those. When I go to people’s homes and I see the little things they’re obsessed with, I
wonder why no one has ever exhibited them. This is a place for that, and even if it’s just a show, people will come and get inspired. We won’t make any money, but if people get inspired then they’ll come back again and possibly, hopefully, buy something someday.

O’BRIEN: How much of the stuff here is for sale?

SPADE: Ninety percent of it.

O’BRIEN: Really?

SPADE: Yeah, 90 percent. But some of it is prohibitively expensive—this beautiful collection of nature books is really expensive. So we don’t expect to sell it, especially in these times. We’re making a bag right now for the place. One side says, Everything must go, because it feels to me, personally, that everything must go.

O’BRIEN: Yeah.

SPADE: [laughs] It’s like the complete population is wearing that kind of message on their faces. Maybe not on their bags, but on their faces.

O’BRIEN: I did a sale ad for Barneys once that said, Everything might go.

SPADE: [laughs] I love that.

O’BRIEN: Is there any variation on lost our lease?

SPADE: Yeah, might lose our lease. When we opened the J.Crew Liquor Store, we actually covered the windows with paper cloth, and it said, A guy walks into a bar and orders a madras. He walks out with a pair of trousers. That was before the store opened, so everyone in the neighborhood was like, “Wow, what is that? What’s it gonna be?” We had a lot of ideas that never went anywhere. We wanted to sell old mattresses for a while. We would pull them off the street. I thought it would look really great. People could stay and sleep for a few days, if necessary. Is that a Liquor Store sweater you’re wearing?

O’BRIEN: No, my mother-in-law gave me this for Christmas.

SPADE: Did she really? It’s a great color. I need to get a green V-neck. I think I’ll go change later today.