Designers

An Interview With: Susie Cave

Susie Cave of The Vampire’s Wife discusses her new homeware label, The Vampire’s House – exclusive to MATCHESFASHION – and why her debut pre-SS22 collection is the stuff of fairytales and fantasy.

Interview by Christopher Prince.
Portrait by Polly Borland.

The magical thing about Susie Cave’s vision for The Vampire’s Wife is just how uniquely authentic it is. Designs are entirely personal, referencing the past while staying firmly rooted in modernity. ‘I do an awful lot of saying “No!”. That’s the only way of staying true to my aesthetic,’ Cave tells MATCHESFASHION. ‘I always design everything through a filter of my own imagination and what I feel is something beautiful and needed.’

Cave is a pragmatic designer. After all, she founded The Vampire’s Wife in 2016 on the simple premise of feeling excluded by the lack of clothing options that catered to her unapologetically feminine sense of style. Delve deeper into Cave’s world and you’ll come across the Stuff page on The Vampire’s Wife website. ‘There is always a theme, a story, usually inspired by the books and artists I love, which you can find there,’ she says. The blog curates many of Cave’s favourite curiosities, from poems by New Zealand’s Jenny Bornholdt, a recent picture of actress Andie MacDowell in the brand’s pink lamé Penitent pantsuit and, of course, an ode to husband Nick Cave in concert. 

She has channelled that same energy into her first homeware foray, fittingly named The Vampire’s House. ‘I have made all the things I could never find that I love, and I hope everyone will love, too,’ she says. In the collection, there are 12 core styles to furnish the bedroom. Much like her clothing, Cave included pieces that catered to her own tastes, ‘I could not find an eiderdown or hot water bottle case I liked, which is always a starting point for me,’ she says. Ranging from floral silk pillows, sleep masks and teddy bears, to porcelain trinket boxes and embellished lavender pouches, there’s opulence in every piece. Next, her goal is to create an edit for every room in the house.

Fabrics are a huge focus for The Vampire’s Wife, and indeed now, the homeware line. ‘My absolute favourite fabric in the world is Liberty,’ she says. ‘Nick [Cave] and I created a new design with Liberty’s archivists that dates back to 1700.’ Cave continues, ‘I chose to have the eiderdowns made from both silk-satin and poplin, so you can decide which feels most comfortable depending on the winter or summer weather – I love its sensual quality.’ Cave is also a stickler for primary research, with historical fabrics informing her designs. ‘I often delve into the archives of historic fabric companies like The Whitchurch Silk Mill, the oldest working silk mill in England, where I redesign fabrics from the 1800s, adding different flowers and The Vampire’s Wife signature colours. With the homeware collection, I also had our name woven into the design.’

When suggesting visuals for The Vampire’s House, Cave produced various snippets of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Princess and the Pea. ‘I love fairy tale art more so than the actual stories, as I like to interpret them in my own visual way,’ she says. ‘My little dog, Nosferatu, enjoyed being the princess in one of the photographs where we piled up the eiderdowns over his basket.’ As for her favourite piece from the collection, she chose two. ‘The Vampire’s Teddy Bear, who has little fangs to protect and keep you safe at night,’ – which Cave confesses to snuggling while husband and rock legend Nick Cave is on tour – ‘and the beautiful black velvet eiderdown with gold sequins, moons and embroidered gold starbursts.’ 

The Vampire’s House is an extension of the designer’s world. ‘They’re all intertwined – I love the idea of matching my bedlinen to my nightwear and my teddy bear,’ says Cave. It’s a nice segue to the pre-SS22 collection, The Sleepwalker, which was informed, as Cave puts it poetically, by sleeping and dreaming. For this collection, along with a familiar assortment of talking-point tea dresses and Victoriana-inspired gowns favoured by the likes of the Duchess of Cambridge, Tilda Swinton, Florence Welch and Alexa Chung, plus Cave’s opulent prints and signature flounce, there’s an evident shift to easier, relaxed silhouettes such as a matching knitted lurex set in which to lounge around the house.

As is tradition after each completed collection, the Caves rather sweetly christen each design by holding a naming ceremony. This season, there’s The Light Sleeper, The Night Flight, The Nocturama and The Falconetti, which correlates to the eiderdowns in The Vampire’s House collection. Cave even included a self-titled floral-jacquard raincoat.

When it comes to Cave’s own home, she is drawn to colour, ‘I have an emerald-green bedroom and bathroom and a lavender dressing room.’ Most surprising of all is her devotion to pink. ‘It’s a secret paint recipe that my friend Solange Azagury-Partridge gave me. Everything else in the room seems to look more beautiful with a pink background. I also paint the walls, shutters, skirting boards, ceiling, and floor all the same shade so that it feels like you are in a beautiful jewellery box – it’s a wonderful backdrop for our Louis Wain cats.’ 

Take a tour around her offices and you’ll find the same shade: it’s a signature synonymous with Susie Cave, a woman who in every sense embodies The Vampire’s Wife.

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PHOTOGRAPHS POLLY BORLAND/GETTY IMAGES.