Introduction
Jennifer Lyu is a New York-based accessories designer with more than twenty-five years of fashion experience. Before Kate Spade New York she led handbag and small-leather-goods design at Tory Burch. Earlier roles included design leadership at 3.1 Phillip Lim across women’s and men’s accessories, footwear and ready-to-wear, along with senior design positions at Emilio Pucci, Louis Vuitton and Prada.
Kate Spade New York formally appointed Lyu on 7 September 2022 as SVP and Head of Design, Leather Goods and Accessories. She led handbags, small leather goods and tech categories and partnered with Tom Mora, Head of Ready-to-Wear and Lifestyle Design, as one of the brand’s two principal product designers. Their remit joined category-specific expertise with a shared seasonal direction through the Ideation Studio.
Lyu’s public Kate Spade work includes Spring 2023, Fall 2023 and Spring 2024, where she revisited archival forms and details while keeping handbags central to the collection. She was still serving as SVP and Head of Design when the HEINZ collaboration launched in June 2024. Lyu’s professional profile dates the end of her Kate Spade tenure to November 2024.
Design ethos
Lyu approaches accessories through proportion, construction and brand handwriting. Her career across luxury houses and contemporary American brands developed a close attention to leather, hardware, edge finishing and the relationship between a recognisable bag shape and the practical demands of daily use.
At Kate Spade she worked directly with the archive, studying older Noel products and other handbag references before translating selected details into new forms. The result was controlled heritage use: archival clasps, geometry and familiar bag logic appeared inside products designed for current wardrobes, with wit carried through material, colour and scale.
Her partnership with Tom Mora connected leather goods to clothing and lifestyle categories. Accessories were developed as part of the seasonal composition, matching colour, motif and mood across the collection while retaining enough object-level precision to stand independently. This cross-category discipline defined the strongest public work of their shared tenure.
Disclaimer
Career history
2024
Tom Mora and Jennifer Lyu both left Kate Spade New York during 2024, ending the paired product-leadership structure announced in 2022. Lyu remained publicly identified in her design role through the June HEINZ collaboration, leaving her as the later confirmed member of the pair that year.
2024
Kate Spade New York and HEINZ launched a joint capsule on 26 June 2024 spanning bags, small leather goods, clothing, footwear and accessories. Jennifer Lyu discussed the design direction in her role as SVP and Head of Design, connecting the collaboration to the final phase of her accessories leadership.
2022
Kate Spade New York formally named Jennifer Lyu SVP and Head of Design, Leather Goods and Accessories on 7 September 2022. She became one of the brand's paired principal product designers, leading handbags and accessories alongside Tom Mora's clothing and lifestyle remit.
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