Notes on VAMP

Model DEVON ROSS, embodying the season's sexy goth revival, makes her acting debut as every cinephile's dark dream girl in Irma Vep.

- MELISSA GIANNINI

There’s a prickly kind of thrill to having coffee with someone who is teetering between anonymity and fame—something about the mix of caffeine and clairvoyance makes even the most jaded culture journalist remember why she started doing this in the first place.

I can tell the waiter at this hip TriBeCa hotel café knows the feeling, as he shakily places a mug of black coffee in front of Devon Ross, a clean-faced beauty with a raven-colored ’70s shag cut. On the morning in question, we are a few days away from the Cannes premiere of Irma Vep—the HBO limited series in which the 22-year-old model makes her acting debut—where she oozed Old Hollywood glamour and Gen Z je ne sais quoi in a cream silk Celine gown and pearl-dotted finger waves. Still, I get the sense our waiter knows she is someone he should be able to recognize.

Similarly, Ross’s black sweater bears the face of a woman who looks familiar, but I can’t seem to place. “It’s my boyfriend’s mom,” she says—Susie Cave, cofounder of the clothing brand The Vampire’s Wife; spouse to musician Nick Cave; and mother to Ross’s partner, the actor Earl Cave. Ross met Earl while shooting a 2020 Disney x Gucci campaign. “We didn’t really talk that day,” she says with a smile. “We were both very shy, I was on the clock, and it was, like, 4 a.m. backstage at Disneyland. I got to see Chewbacca with his mask off, smoking a cigarette!” She laughs, recalling having been scolded by Disney staff for trying to FaceTime with a friend, and quickly regrets telling me the Chewbacca story, pleading into my recorder, “Don’t come for me, Disney!”