Beyond The Vampire’s Wife: Susie Cave is back with a new venture
by Lauren Sams · Australian Financial ReviewLauren SamsFin editor, deputy editor AFR Magazine and fashion editor
Aug 14, 2026 – 5.10am
Something remarkable is happening to the light behind Susie Cave. As we chat, the designer, best known for her now-defunct label The Vampire’s Wife (named for an unfinished novel her husband, Australian musician Nick Cave, wrote), is shrouded by the window frame behind her. Twin arches that flank her emit such beams of light that it appears Cave – with her full-cream milk skin and Morticia Addams hair – is an angel.
It is the kind of exquisite irony that has come to define Cave. Yes, she was a model – but she was a punk too, and a goth. Yes, she married a rock star – one who is a former altar boy, a novelist and sometime agony aunt to his newsletter subscribers. She is a fashion designer, of course, but something of an accidental one – and her new venture, she says, will be all the better for learning from the mistakes she made when The Vampire’s Wife became more successful than she could have imagined.
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Lauren SamsFin editor, deputy editor AFR Magazine and fashion editorLauren Sams is the editor of Fin Magazine, The Australian Financial Review’s luxury quarterly edition. She is also the deputy editor at The Australian Financial Review Magazine and the fashion editor. She writes about the business of fashion and beauty. Email Lauren at lauren.sams@afr.com
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