Kate Spades best friend remembers the late designers immense charm and secret sadness in new book: She felt things more deeply than most

Seven years on, Elyce Arons still misses Kate Spade.The two pals met in college at the University of Kansas and remained kindred spirits for nearly 40 years.Together, they helped launch Kate Spade New York in the 1990s and had recently started a new accessories brand, Frances Valentine, when Spade took her own life in 2018, at the age of 55.“I think of her every day,” Arons told The Post.

“I still get choked up talking about her.”Spade’s death seven years ago shocked the fashion industry.Her cheery, colorful designs made people smile, and she seemed to have a picture-perfect life, with a creative, supportive husband and daughter who adored her.In her new book, “We Just Might Make It After All” (Gallery Books, June 17), Arons writes that Spade had suffered from depression in the months leading up to her death.

The two spoke about it and had even “discussed the suicides of celebrities in the past and [Katy] had said definitively to me, ‘I would never, ever do that.’”Arons also writes that Spade “worshiped her daughter” and that she and husband Andy Spade were “working out their marriage issues and living separately” but that they “loved each other to the ends of the earth.”“She was private about many things, even with me,” she writes.“A highly sensitive person, she felt things more deeply than most.

… We all have dark moments and periods.In one of those moments, she lost hope.”Arons’ charming and effervescent memoir depicts the beloved fashion designer as a fierce friend and driven worker whose intense charisma belied an incredible shyness.She laughed when her tulle dress caught fire during her wedding reception (the guests dumped their drinks on it to extinguish the flames), lost the cap of her tooth when climbing a tree before a big meeting with the Esteé Lauder Company, and played pranks on her friends.She was, in short, a delight.“I feel like so many people remember how she left us, and I want them to remember h...