Draped across a sumptuous velvet chaise longue within the art deco splendour of Eltham Palace, Susie Cave is moonlighting as a fabulous Biba-bobbed lady of the manor. But among the opulent fashion – all accessorised with a delightful pekingese named Mister JoJo – there’s something curious in Cave’s closet: a black iridescent silk-velvet dress with a discreet label that reads: Susie Cave Weddings & Funerals. The gothic confection is Cave’s latest brainchild.
“Like my brand The Vampire’s Wife – which was subversive, funny and mischievous – its name is not literally a description of what it is,” says Cave, a twinkle in her eye while sipping tea (her own jasmine pearl blend) during a quiet moment on set in the former royal palace made over by eccentric millionaires, Stephen and Virginia Courtauld, in the 1930s. Indeed, you might not gather from its idiosyncratic moniker that Susie Cave Weddings & Funerals is an appointment-only Kensington shop selling embellished white and black demi-couture. “It’s a surreal, strange, beautiful and secretive experience,” she says, listing adjectives that could just as easily be applied to the extraordinary 59-year-old model turned designer herself.
So secretive is the new venture that Cave – to whom dresses appear as “a parade running through [her] mind” each morning – has only shown her 25 made-to-order pieces, which can be customised with capes, trains, veils and embellishments, to two friends: Bella Freud and Florence Welch(Vogue is the third lucky viewer). “Florence wanted to run off with everything there and then!” says Cave of the singer, who has long subscribed to the Susie Cave school of fashion. Welch explains: “There’s something about Susie’s designs that make me feel so powerful, and yet always comfortable and totally myself. There really is a touch of magic in everything she does.” Fans of Cave’s first ruffled-trimmed, retro-look dresses were devastated when The Vampire’s Wife shuttered in 2024 after Cave “lost control” of the company with ambitious investors steering it towards an untenable wholesale model, which was vulnerable to upheavals in the retail sector.
But now: hope. Actors and creatives such as Keira Knightley, Dakota Johnson and Greta Bellamacina (who says Cave’s work is akin to wearing a “protective character’s cloak”) can tackle press tours in ornate Susie Cave Weddings & Funerals looks realised, initially at least, in either ink or ivory. Elevation is key but “there’s not a flower pattern in sight,” notes Cave of the key differences between her 2014-founded brand and its 2026 successor. Yes to brocade although “there’s no print. It’s all to do with the textures of the 100 per cent silk, silk-velvet or organdy – anything that feels good to wear, that’s the criteria.” That and taking her time: “I want it to feel small and personal.”
Cave is realistic about the current retail climate, but returning to the business that greedily devoured her last label, then disposed of it, doesn’t faze her. “Past experiences have built a resilience and inner strength that leaves little room for ordinary apprehensions,” she says, hinting discreetly at the seismic tragedies of her own life: the death of her son, Arthur, who fell from a cliff after taking LSD in 2015, aged 15, and her stepson, Jethro, who died in 2022, aged 31, from undisclosed causes. “These emotions are as raw as ever, but I’m opening a dress shop, I see it as that.”
“It’s a complete mystery to me,” writes Nick Cave, pre-eminent musical force and Susie’s husband of almost 27 years, when I ask him about the creative process of the ethereal woman to whom he faxed letters for a year before they even kissed, and then wed on Richmond’s Paradise Road in 1999. “Susie appears to have a unique ability to freely tap into the imaginative world around us. She seems to draw her singular creations from thin air, from her reveries, from her intuitions. She tells me she dreams her dresses, and it’s true; sometimes, I wake up to find our bed covered in little pieces of paper with indecipherable scribbles. ‘What are these?’ I once asked. ‘Next season’s collectsion,’ she replied.”
Taking a year off after the closure of The Vampire’s Wife was vital to Cave the businesswoman and Cave the mother. “I was relieved it was all over,” she admits. A “clean break” was in order, from the family’s Regency house in Brighton, close to The Vampire’s Wife’s atelier, but also the scene of Arthur’s death, in favour of a new Kensington pad. It was the gear shift Cave needed to contemplate creating again. Gradually, dresses began appearing in her mind once more, and she enlisted an inner circle of six staffers from The Vampire’s Wife to help her realise her made-in-Britain vision. Rather than a soothing balm for her despair (“Work is what has saved me,” Susie told British Vogue in a 2017 profile), she began thinking about how her signature looks could make others feel.
For Bella Freud, the “fairy godmother” behind Cave’s own late ’90s wedding dress, her friend’s USP is simple: “Susie has this ability to make a dress that personifies romance. She creates allure and charm. Her dresses give the wearer the best proportions: a slender torso with high breasts and endless suggestion of leg. Weddings and funerals are occasions to be marked by intense feelings. Susie literally dresses those feelings.”
Cave, who will open the doors to her theatrical, Groves Natcheva-designed store in May, has always felt fashion offered her a sisterhood she never had. After learning her way around a sewing machine aged seven, thanks to her grandmother, Susie Hardie-Bick, as Cave was then known, spent her early teens redesigning her friends’ clothes while boarding at Devon’s Dartington Hall. When flares went out of style overnight, Susie was their saviour, transforming everyone’s trousers into “skin-tight, Olivia Newton-John” versions. “It was my way of making friends, because I grew up in a lot of different places,” says Cheshire-born Cave, who had a peripatetic upbringing due to her father’s work as a diplomat.
It was in New York that Cave’s life changed forever. After being expelled from Dartington (“I don’t know how I managed it, there were no rules”), Susie hitchhiked to London via milk float, then flew to Manhattan to see her father in his latest post. She happened to walk into Carnegie Hall where she was spotted by Bethann Hardison, the legendary model agent who opened her agency that very same day in 1984. “I was just this young school girl,” says Cave of being whisked off to do test shots with photographer Steven Meisel. He encouraged her to return to her studies, which she did, albeit briefly. When Susie returned to New York some years later, at first Meisel didn’t remember the raven-haired, porcelain-skinned waif before him. Of course the pair went on to work together, while the impressive roster of photographers who have immortalised her includes Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton and David Bailey.
Now, holed up in Eltham on a dismal February afternoon, it is Cave’s sweet nature that also captivates. She is the first to dish out London’s best-kept nail bar secret (book an appointment at Susie Cave Weddings & Funerals and she’ll tell you), request snaps with the security guards responsible for the diamonds (to show Nick) and proffer vintage treasures from her own wardrobe to complement photographer and stylist Venetia Scott’s extravagant edit. “I knew Susie could hold her own in the surroundings,” says Scott. “The clothes are exaggerated to explore the idea of dressing up again and feeling fabulous.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m modelling again,” teases Cave, who made a surprise star turn on the runway at her friend Haider Ackermann’s sophomore Tom Ford show back in October. “I wasn’t expecting it…” she tails off, feeling shy about the rapturous response. “I was telling Nick earlier that I’ve never worked [as a model] for British Vogue in my entire life. At 59, I’ve been waiting so long.” As ever, fashion has not seen the last of Susie Cave.
Hair: Ali Pirzadeh. Make-up: Miranda Joyce. Nails: Adam Slee. Set design: Gideon Ponte. Tailor: Megan O’Connor. Production: Image Partnership. Hand printing: Daren Catlin. Post-production: May Global. Car (1971 Daimler Sovereign): Geoffrey & Matthew Waterman. Dog: Mister JoJo.