February 6th, 2006 12:00am

By Sophia Chabbott

NEW YORK - Kate Spade's spring ad campaign will take the company's
preppy image into a new format.

Plum TV officials declined to reveal the possible fees.

The company has called upon the Neistat Brothers, a pair of
up-and-coming filmmakers, to supplement the print visuals with a
trio of short films.

"We like storytelling," said Andy Spade, Kate Spade's co-founder
and chief executive officer. "[And short films] are another way to
talk to people."

One of the films, "Majorettes," tells the story of two
twentysomething women who are wandering through a suburban town,
separately. The women are wearing identical clothes and both are
loaded up with Kate Spade accessories. At the end of the film, they
meet up with one another.

Another film features a woman from Bisbee, Ariz., near where
Spade was born and where he and company namesake and co-founder
Kate Spade went to college at Arizona State University. The woman
in the film is reminiscing while eating a piece of pie.

The films will be projected onto various buildings during New
York Fashion Week near the tents at Bryant Park, although specific
locations were not disclosed. Spade also has plans to show them in
upcoming months on Plum TV, a channel that airs in Nantucket and
Martha's Vineyard, Mass.; Vail, Colo., and other upscale resort
towns, as well as enter them in various short film festivals.

The 12-page print campaign for spring is the largest Kate Spade
has ever done and is in a narrative style. Photographed by Tim
Walker and styled by Camille-Bidault Waddington under Julia Leach's
creative direction, the ads mirror the short films and are about
two stylish city women who take a road trip to their childhood town,
Bisbee. There are shots of the women shopping for vintage
accessories, reading books in a used bookstore and hitchhiking to
Manhattan after their car has broken down on the highway.

Featured styles in the campaign include Kate Spade's wicker
hobo bags, optic print clutches with leather trim and sandals
with coral accents. The clothes, which are mostly vintage, include
officer's jackets and knee-length skirts.

Spade likened the collaboration with Walker to another famous
designer-photographer partnership.

"Tim relates to [our offering] as we relate to his photography,"
he said. "It reminds me of how Ralph Lauren worked with Bruce Weber.
It's simpatico."

The full print campaign bows in March issues of Vogue, Vanity
Fair, The New York Times' T and Town & Country.

Alternative advertising methods are not new for Andy Spade,
who spent 11 years as an advertising executive at firms including
Saatchi & Saatchi before cofounding the company. In 1995, two
years after the company was started, he implemented a poster
campaign in major cities showing Kate Spade in quirky situations.

In September 2005, The Neiman Marcus Group, which purchased a
majority interest of Kate Spade in 1999 for $33.6 million, put it
up for sale. Texas Pacific Group and Warburg Pincus, two equity
firms, acquired NMG in May for $5.1 billion and are still seeking
a sale of Kate Spade.