Hi! I am Kate.
I am an NYC-based artist, illustrator and designer specializing in bespoke fine art wedding stationery, personal and corporate event branding, and whimsical, giftable goods for the home and your life. I LOVE weddings. I LOVE big personal and charitable events (baby showers! 50th birthdays! fancy school benefits!). And I also love designing playful items to add joy and love to the home.
I started Kate Kelly Design ("KKD") and its accompanying, now mostly defunct, blog "A la recherche" (translation "In Search") in 2013 after a lifetime of dreaming. KKD began as a “passion project” on the side while I worked full time on Wall Street. And in 2020, after 14 years in finance, in the midst of the pandemic, I realized there wasn’t a moment to lose, threw caution to the wind and quit my “day job” to give KKD my all. Since that leap of faith, I have been floored by the incredible opportunities I've had to collaborate with amazing creatives and clients and to bring flowers and color and some very silly animals into the world.
I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, with my FAO Schwartz art briefcase in hand, a creative, fashion-designing mom and a household that supported my artistic bent and entrepreneurial spirit. After high school, I moved east and attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire where I studied Comparative Literature in French & Philosophy and dabbled in Studio Art, lived abroad in Paris and finally landed in New York, where I studied Interior Design at Parsons School of Design (where an interior rendering class reignited my childhood love of watercolors) and completed my MBA at Columbia Business School while working in financial services. Trips to Asia, Africa and the American West and a lengthy stint in the Hamptons (thanks, 2020!) have further influenced my aesthetic, and I can't wait for my next cultural journey when my kids' busy schedules allow.
I met my now-lawyer-husband Matt in college, married him in 2010 (further inspiring my love of all things wedding), and now have free rein to bother him with questions like, "Do you like this chair?" (He's learned to say yes.) We welcomed our sons Michael in 2016 and Theo in 2018 and have never loved anything more. Michael and Theo are my muses and inspire me to see the world through their eyes - a world of color and wonder and imagination (and monsters, lots of monsters). I find inspiration everywhere and have a passion for whimsifying the world I see (because why not make it all fun?). My creative focus is on making things beautiful, unique and personal through color, paint, texture and space. And my personal focus is on helping you get inspired to follow your passions and be your truest self. Each of us has an ever-evolving, beautiful, delicious, romantic, heartbreaking, funny, unique story to tell, and it is my absolute privilege to be able to help you illustrate yours. And to do it with a wink, a little bit of dancing, and a healthy dose of whimsy.
Join the party! It's pretty fun here!
KKD Core Values
KKD is about love, celebration, self-expression, diversity and inclusion. It's about the beauty around and in all of us. It's about living a life that is true to you. KKD advocates for anti-racism and the equality of all humankind. If this is not your value set, I invite you to shop elsewhere. But before you do, I invite you first to have a conversation with me to help get you on the right side of the fence so that we can together dismantle systemic racism and advocate for the equality of all. I believe in a "you do you" philosophy but have a hard stance on racism, classism and genderism and would venture to say that if you're lukewarm in this space, you're in fact not "doing you" to the fullest.
With love, celebration and inclusion,
Kate, aka KK