Andy moved to New York but they couldn't afford to live separately so they shared a tiny studio apartment, and he got a job in the advertising business. Kate began to think about doing something else. "It was less about wanting to be a designer and more wanting to start a business," she says. "I thought, 'What do I like?' I liked accessories and, specifically, I loved handbags." She quit her job, and at home cut shapes out of construction paper and glued them together to get the bags' proportions just right. Then she checked out manufacturers in far-flung Brooklyn. "It took five trains to get there, and five trains back," she says. "No one bothered to mug me."
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