Kate Middleton Just Wore The Vampire’s Wife, Susie Cave’s Label That Has Changed The Way Women Dress

So particular, so personal, is Susie Cave’s vision that she never expected her label – The Vampire’s Wife – to become the phenomenon it is today. But that’s exactly what's happened.

The appeal of The Vampire’s Wife, founded in 2016, is that it manages to be at once of another era and thoroughly modern, heart-flutteringly glamorous and yet practically effortless (these dresses make an impact but they are easy to wear, they do the hard work for you). Her designs are romantic, refined and rebellious all at once. And, as the name suggests, there is bite in this beauty - it is bewitching, gothic even.

Her distinctive dresses – from the floor-sweeping gowns in metallic fil coupe and Liberty print cotton, to the wiggle-worthy shifts in saturated silks – have quickly become a red-carpet staple. For Kate Middleton's first joint official portrait with her husband, she side-stepped a ball gown for modern metallics courtesy of Cave, rewearing the brand's emerald dress that she last sported in March 2020.

Fellow fans include acting royalty (Sienna Miller, Cate Blanchett, Ruth Negga) and singers (Kylie Minogue, Florence Welch) to models (Kate Moss, Daisy Lowe) and actual royalty (of course). But the best poster girl for the brand is Cave herself.

But who is she? Cave might have only relatively recently established herself as a designer, but she is a fashion veteran. After running away from boarding to school to New York in her teens, she was discovered by the photographer Steven Meisel. An ethereal beauty with raven hair and porcelain skin, it seems inevitable that an illustrious career as a model followed; she worked with the likes of Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent and Vivienne Westwood, appeared on the cover of a Roxy Music album and was shot by legendary photographers such as Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton and Nick Knight. This experience has given her an intimate understanding of how women want clothes to look – and feel (born in Cheshire and raised in Africa, the young Susie Bick– as she was known then – would make and adjust clothes growing up).

Today, she works and lives in Brighton with her husband, the musician Nick Cave, who shares the same poetic sensibility as his wife (the couple were introduced in 1997 backstage at a Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds gig by mutual friend Bella Freud). Creatively, there is clearly a synergy between them; The Vampire’s Wife takes its name from an abandoned book he started, while a collaboration with Annoushka included charms inspired by her favourite songs and lyrics. She is his muse; he is her biggest fan.

SEE: The Vampire's Wife's Celebrity Fans