Elyce Arons, WE MIGHT JUST MAKE IT AFTER ALL: My Best Friendship with Kate Spade
Totally Booked with Zibby
Zibby Owens
4.5 • 643 Ratings
🗓️ 25 December 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Special re-release! To close out the year, we’re counting down the Top 10 most-listened-to episodes of 2025. Coming in at #7: Zibby’s interview with Elyce Arons. Enjoy!
Zibby interviews Elyce Arons, the cofounder of Kate Spade and CEO and cofounder of Frances Valentine, about WE JUST MIGHT MAKE IT AFTER ALL, a moving portrait of her decades-long best friendship and business journey with Kate Spade. Elyce describes their early days as broke college students, the scrappy beginnings of their brand, and how they turned a simple handbag idea into a cultural phenomenon and multi-billion-dollar fashion company. She shares how she is honoring Kate’s legacy with Frances Valentine, with vintage-inspired, colorful designs. Finally, she reflects on her resilience in the face of personal and professional challenges, the importance of community and friendship, and how writing this book was a fulfilling and emotional experience.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive |
| 0:24.0 | look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't |
| 0:29.3 | have to. |
| 0:30.3 | Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. |
| 0:36.2 | For more information, go to zibbimedia.com and follow me on Instagram |
| 0:40.2 | at Zibby Owens. Today we have number seven of the 10 most popular downloaded episodes |
| 0:50.8 | of Totally Booked in 2025. Enjoy. |
| 0:58.7 | Elise Ehrens is the author of We Might Just Make It After All, |
| 1:00.8 | My Best Friendship with Kate Spade. |
| 1:06.5 | By the way, this is my book club pick, and we'll be meeting with Elise to talk about it. |
| 1:12.1 | Elise Erins is the co-founder of Kate Spade and co-founder and CEO of Francis Valentine. |
| 1:18.2 | Elise began her career in publicity and marketing before starting the multi-billion dollar bag company Kate Spade, |
| 1:23.8 | alongside Katie, Katie's husband, Andy, and Pamela Bell out of a downtown New York City apartment. |
| 1:28.6 | She has been featured on Good Morning America and today and in People, WWD, New York Magazine, Anne Moore. Elise lives in New York with her husband and three daughters. Welcome, |
| 1:33.5 | Elise. Thank you so much for coming on totally booked with Zibby to talk about. We might just make it, |
| 1:38.9 | after all, my best friendship with Kate Spade. Congratulations. Thank you. And thanks for having me. |
| 1:44.0 | Oh, it's my pleasure. |
| 1:45.4 | I loved this book for so many reasons, the fact that it charted the whole business evolution |
| 1:50.8 | of Kate Spade and your involvement with that. So it was kind of like a business memoir on the side. |
| 1:55.4 | But while you track your friendship with Kate Spade and both of it and it's really like your own coming of age story. |
| 2:03.0 | I just loved it. It was like three books and one. So congrats. |
| 2:06.6 | Oh, thank you so much. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it and it was so therapeutic at the same time. |
... |
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