Meet Nicola Morgan | Founder | Vampire Surf Club

We had the good fortune of connecting with Nicola Morgan and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nicola, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
Vampire Surf Club started with a sunburn.

My partner and I were on a surf trip to Maui, surfing Honolua Bay on one of those perfect days, glassy conditions, uncrowded, and the perfect size. We’d been in the water for hours when I looked down and realized my legs were badly burned. I have extremely pale skin, and I knew I was past the point where applying more sunscreen would make any difference. On top of that, most of the sunscreen washed off in the water pretty quickly and whatever didn’t rubbed off on my board and making it slippery.

We drove around the island looking for a solution. I ended up with yoga leggings and a hat I had to chase after every wipeout, but the whole frustrating search made one thing very clear: there was a serious lack of good sun protection options for surfers, especially women. A few brands were making hooded rashguards for men, exactly the kind of thing I needed, but nobody was making one for women. That was the moment: I knew exactly what I needed, and I had the design background to make it.

I’ve spent over fifteen years in fashion, including eight years designing for luxury houses in Paris. After moving to Los Angeles in 2018, I worked across creative and design leadership roles spanning contemporary brands, high-end luxury, and performance sportswear. That range is exactly what Vampire Surf Club required: the design sensibility to make something beautiful, and the technical knowledge to make it perform.

The brand was built around a clear vision: high-quality surfwear with sun protection at its core and a genuine focus on design, putting women surfers at the forefront and building a community that reflects the diversity we see in the lineup here in Venice. We also wanted to tread as lightly on the planet as possible. We use Italian fabric made with ECONYL® regenerated nylon yarn for our rashguards and swimwear, premium Japanese limestone-based neoprene for our springsuits, and all our packaging is sustainably sourced and biodegradable, right down to the dissolvable mailer we ship in.

Running alongside that is a mission around sun education in the surf community. Water amplifies UV exposure significantly, and as surfers we’re spending hours at a time in full sun. UV is responsible for 90% of skin aging and is a known driver of skin cancer. Part of what Vampire Surf Club does is create content that makes that conversation feel relevant and real to surfers. Because sun protection shouldn’t be an afterthought, and neither should design. Nobody should have to get out of the water early because of a sunburn. That’s what Vampire Surf Club is really about.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Honestly, nothing about this has been easy. But I also feel incredibly fortunate.

Throughout my career I’ve had the opportunity to learn from some truly exceptional people, including the late Alber Elbaz, who was my mentor for many years. Those experiences shaped not just how I design but how I think about culture and brand. I was learning constantly, and I still am.

Vampire Surf Club has challenged me in ways I didn’t fully anticipate. My background is in creative work, and building a brand means stepping into aspects of business I had to learn from scratch. The balancing act is real: you have to protect the creative vision while also dealing with the practical realities of running a small company on a limited budget. I’ve learned to give myself the space to dream without immediately filtering everything through cost and logistics, and then come back to the vision and figure out how to make it happen with the resources I have. That gap between vision and reality is where a lot of the work lives.

People sometimes assume that working for yourself means freedom and ease. In reality I work harder now than I ever have, but when you love what you’re doing, hard work just feels like momentum. And I’m deeply grateful to have found something worth that level of commitment.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Los Angeles is one of those places where you could spend a lifetime and still not see everything. The thing I love most about living here is the range of experiences you can have: the city, the beach, and the mountains all within easy reach, and the quality of life across all of it is just exceptional.

We’d start every morning in the water. Venice Breakwater is a classic, Topanga and Malibu are iconic for good reason, and if we had time we’d head up and down the coast to a few of my favorite lesser-known spots.

The food here is genuinely world class. I love Sushi Enya on Washington, Gjusta, Gjelina, Si! Mon, and the incredible variety of asian restaurants in Sawtelle and Koreatown. I’m also obsessed with matcha so that would definitely feature. If we made it up to Malibu, lobster rolls from Broad Street Oyster at the Malibu Country Mart are non-negotiable.

I’d take them to downtown to explore the architecture, and out to Silver Lake to visit the Case Study Homes. That whole area has a completely different energy to the Westside and it’s worth a full day. And if they hadn’t been before, a drive up into the canyons or out to the mountains is the kind of thing that reminds you why people come here and never leave.

A week goes fast in LA. You’d leave with a list of things you didn’t get to, which honestly is part of the charm.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The number one shoutout has to go to my partner Lawrence. Without his belief in me I’m not sure I would have had the confidence to start this at all.

I’m also extremely grateful to the Venice Surfing Association, and specifically Alix Gukovsky, who has been so supportive in helping us connect with the local surf community and welcoming Vampire Surf Club into it from early on.

We’ve also been incredibly fortunate to collaborate with some amazing people along the way, including professional free surfer Noah Hill. We have a project in the works with him that we can’t wait to share.

Website: https://vampiresurfclub.com/

Instagram: @vampiresurfclub

Image Credits
Lauren Weiss, Aljaz Babnik