Susie Cave Teases The Return Of The Vampire’s Wife

Susie Cave celebrated her 60th birthday on stage at Cadogan Hall with her friend of 40 years Bella Freud, on the publication day of her intimate new book SUSIE with husband Nick Cave and photographer Dominique Issermann. Speaking candidly with her closest friend, Cave told the Chelsea Arts Festival audience about her remarkable life, loves, and losses.

(Villa Lina, Italy 2008 © Dominique Issermann – taken from SUSIE)

A Life On Film

Much of the evening’s conversation centred on Cave’s relationship with French photographer Dominique Issermann, which began professionally when Cave was a young model but grew into something closer to family. From the images in the book and the anecdotes shared, Dominique feels almost omnipresent in Nick and Susie’s life, capturing family candids and spending hours photographing ‘every detail’ of Susie when they’re together.

The book features a nude photograph of Susie Cave sitting on a bed. ‘I had just woken up and click, she’s taken the photo’, Cave recalls. Issermann had a long relationship with Leonard Cohen that ultimately didn’t work out, and Cave suggested that perhaps the photographer has spent so many years training her lens on her and her husband as a representation of what their love could have been if it had stood the test of time.

(Liss Ard, Ireland, 1998 © Dominique Issermann – taken from SUSIE)

A Marriage Story

Speaking about her husband Nick, Cave traced back to the early days of their romance; racing across Ireland from a health retreat to be with him, waiting for his car, swinging higher and higher on a swing just to catch the first glimpse of his car arriving (while Issermann laid in the grass below, unbeknownst to her, impatiently snapping photographs that now live inside the pages of Susie). 

Freud spoke of watching her closest friend’s marriage from the outside for 30 years, of how enamoured they still are with each other after all this time. When asked how she felt about the words he has written about her in this book, Susie said: ‘He writes so beautifully… Nothing is ever enough to give him.’

(Villa Lina, Italy 2008 © Dominique Issermann – taken from SUSIE)

Love Lost

Cave spoke passionately and generously about life after the loss of her son Arthur, who died in an accident at the age of 15. Arthur features heavily in the photographs in the book, and Susie told the audience how happy she is to share those memories with the world.  

Cave said the grief of losing Arthur was not something that broke her, but that changed the shape of her entirely. ‘I’m different now,’ she said. ‘I’m tougher. I am not afraid of the things I used to be afraid of.’ How could she be, she said, ‘the worst thing has already happened’.

Freud commended Susie’s strength, and how her work played a part in reshaping Cave. ‘I saw you get out of bed and make people the most beautiful clothes,’ she told her. 

Cave’s label The Vampire’s Wife had launched the year before Arthur’s death, in 2014, and ran for a decade before closing in 2024. However, there was a hint of a return for the British fashion label. When talking about her new venture ‘Susie Cave Weddings and Funerals’, the designer was asked whether there was any going back on the decision to close. ‘The Vampire’s Wife has been sleeping, but watch this space,’ she said.

(Brighton, 2016 © Dominique Issermann – taken from SUSIE)

The evening offered an intimate glimpse into the life of one of Britain’s most captivating and enigmatic women, a mirror of what readers will find inside the pages of Susie. It’s clear from this retrospective just how present in Nick and Susie’s lives Dominique has been; yet somehow they don’t find her presence obtrusive or claustrophobic. ‘It was like being taken hostage,’ Susie recalls, of the way Dominique came into – and stayed in – her life. ‘But in a good way.’ 

Susie Cave and Bella Freud in Conversation was the headline opening night event for the 2026 Chelsea Arts Festival, co-presented by 5×15. It marked Cave’s 60th birthday and the publication of SUSIE (Thames & Hudson), built from decades of Dominique Issermann’s photographs and Nick Cave’s own reflections and lyrical texts.