Whether it’s in fashion, culture, or politics, “Gen Z is the most influential generation ever in history,” Erdmann believes. She is also tapping into the brand’s sense of fun, from animal-shaped bags to accessories that nod to Kate Spade’s New York City heritage, like a bagel-shaped bag charm or a wallet designed to look like a Metro Card. “Today, in this world, where everything feels very heavy and uncertain and fragmented and isolated at the same time, I think that a brand that brings optimism and joy and lightness has a role to play—has always had a role to play—but even more today, and that's really what we are building at at Kate Spade,” Erdmann says.
The fashion brand has become known the world over. “I deeply believe that great brands do more than selling products,” says Erdmann. “They shape culture…they bring a vision on the world, they help people feel differently about themselves, or they solve something for them.”
TIME spoke with her earlier this year about navigating that transition, her turnaround effort, and how she’s seeking to preserve the brand’s history.
You've now been in your role coming up to a couple of years. You were previously at L'Oréal. What lessons did you learn through that transition into the world of fashion?
I think what I brought from the beauty industry and the CPG (consumer packaged goods) background is that discipline around the consumer, the consumer being at the center of everything, testing before we invest, really organizing everything around the consumer, and also about the discipline to build hero products that you know you're going to become known for. When you build a hero product, you are also building trust with your consumer, because then they know that if they buy something, it's going to still be relevant the next season or the year after, so, when they start investing in that product, you're also building that trust for them in the long term.
Even before I joined Kate Spade, every time I would talk about this brand to friends or acquaintances, they would never tell me, "Oh, I love the brand" or "I love this handbag.” They would always tell me a story—the first handbag they bought for their first job, or the first bag their mother gave to them for their graduation party, or the bag their sister gave to them for that very specific life moment, for their engagement party. Always a very emotional story. That was something I've never seen for any other brands. So I came with the conviction that there was a very special emotional connection with the consumer.
Does that add an additional layer of pressure, making sure that you maintain the core elements that make people love the brand, while going through a transition with the business, and not tarnishing that?
When you stay true to that really distinctive vision at the beginning, then it can live forever, because what it means to be feminine in 2026 is maybe not the same as in the ’90s, but this is the essence of the brand. We spend hours unboxing bags from the Kate Spade era, from the first years, really looking at all the thoughtful details, the vision of that moment was incredible—the interior, the hardware—I want to start from there, from the true beginning of the brand, and reintroduce it to a new generation of consumers today, that's really the idea.
This is a very competitive market, but we have a very enviable position, today, because 25 million young women are turning 18 every year, and they're looking for their first handbag, and especially their first luxury handbag, and we are here for them at that moment, and that has always been our positioning, and not everyone can claim this positioning. Even more than talking to Gen Z, I'm talking really about this point of market entry, when the consumer wants to buy that first very serious and luxurious handbag, and it's who we are.
What new skill sets or types of talent are you seeking for the next stage of the business's evolution?
You mentioned the 18-year-old buying her first handbag. Does Gen Z account for most of your customers today?
How do you think about the other generations that have grown up with Kate Spade? As a brand, it cuts across Gen X, Millennials, and now Gen Z. How are you thinking about catering to those different consumers?
The current ’90s resurgence ties in nicely with the history of the brand as well.
As a CEO, what are the metrics that you pay most attention to in the business?
As a CEO, you're going to always track the lagging indicators, right? Your sales and your acquisition. When you are in a transformation, when you are in a reinvention, you have to pay attention as much on all the leading indicators, all the metrics that are telling you about your brand health, because this is what you are rebuilding. The connection with the consumer, how they see the brand, all the consumer insights, how they see the brand in their world, how they consider the brand, so the consideration, the engagement they have, the Google search as well—which kind of consumer, and how you're acquiring the consumer—is also critical on the long term. So, tracking all those metrics that tell you about the brand health is critical in this transformation, because there are also early indicators that you are on the right path, that this is what's happening for the brand. So, this is what I'm tracking, and I'm also tracking very closely the teams, and team engagement, how they're doing, because what we often forget is that a brand transformation is first of all a human transformation, and how you create the space and the culture for people to test new things, to be creative, to feel very passionate about the brand is also something very important to monitor in this moment of transformation.
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