Nicola Glass

Nicola Glass is a Northern Irish accessories designer and creative director raised in Ireland. She studied jewellery design at Edinburgh College of Art and completed an MA in Fashion Accessories at the Royal College of Art in London in 2000. Glass began her fashion career at Gucci as a handbag designer under Tom Ford, then moved to New York in 2004 to join Michael Kors, where she spent thirteen years leading accessory design across multiple lines.

Tapestry announced Glass as Creative Director of Kate Spade on 8 November 2017, and she joined the brand in January 2018. Her remit covered all creative aspects, including product design, brand imagery and store environments. She released her first accessories capsule on 6 September 2018 and presented Spring 2019 the following day at the New York Public Library, the first runway show in Kate Spade New York’s history.

Glass developed the spade symbol into a repeated product code across hardware, leather construction, print and textile, while revisiting simple handbag forms from the archive. Her later work included the Spade Flower jacquard developed with Limonta and a sequence of runway, preview and film-led collections through the pandemic period. Kate Spade announced her departure on 4 March 2021, effective 1 April, when the brand moved to a split creative organisation.

Glass’s work begins with accessories construction. Her handbag background is visible in rounded structures, compact hardware, engineered closures and surfaces that carry a motif through the object itself. At Kate Spade she transformed the spade mark into enamel hardware, interlocking leather, prints and woven jacquard, giving a familiar logo a physical role in the product.

Archive use under Glass was selective and practical. Early carryalls, rounded totes, basket shapes and older handle details were revisited through cleaner proportions and updated materials, keeping the original clarity of Kate Spade’s bags visible within a more refined collection. Textiles connected accessories with ready-to-wear, especially as Spade Flower patterns moved between bags and clothing.

Her creative-director remit also linked product with image and space. Campaigns, runway settings and store environments were designed to support the same codes of colour, optimism and graphic restraint, making the brand’s visual identity feel coordinated across physical and editorial touchpoints.