Who is Susie Bick?
As a young girl, Susie ran away from boarding school by catching a ride on the back of a milk float – at 15 she describes catching a plane to Japan ‘with 20p in my pocket’…With her black hair and porcelain white skin, she was one of the most famous English models of the 90’s, featuring on album covers and working for anyone who was anyone in the world of fashion.
Marrying the singer Nick Cave in 1999, she reinvented herself as a fashion designer. Her label ‘The Vampire’s Wife’ is named after one of her husband’s unfinished stories.
So, who is Susie Cave?
She may be famously enigmatic but you only have to look at the clothes…Here is Susie herself, modelling her dresses as if slipping on and off different sides of herself.
Like her, her dresses are otherworldly. They seem to wrap around the wearer like a magic spell. Transformative in their dark Romanticism, they are fairy-tale like and subversively feminine. As Susie herself says: ‘There’s beauty, but infused with a sort of darkness’. This could equally be a description of her husband Nick Cave’s music. Indeed, as one journalist put it: ‘Their entwined careers read like love letters to each other’.
So, I end with a letter written by Nick in response to a fan’s question about shyness and his first date with Susie. Touching and beautifully written, it captures her perfectly.
