Somewhere between Rihanna’s intricately inked hands and Angelina Jolie’s adorned back and shoulders, glimpsed through the sheets in her latest Guerlain advert, the beauty world is finally catching up with fashion when it comes to tattoos. Namely, it's that they can be both beautiful and luxurious, too.
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Once solely the preserve of sailors and convicts, the journey of tattoos into mainstream acceptance has been a long and gradual process. It used to be that we'd only occasionally peek a star's tattoos, partly obscured by the back of their dress or sleeve of their shirt, forever covered up for the red carpet or commercial partnerships. Those who dared to flaunt theirs - Mel C’s famed barbed wire, Cheryl Cole’s rose on her thigh - often ended up the butt of a classist joke. Perhaps it was Kate Moss’s refusal to back down from her rock’n’roll roots (her debut collection for Topshop in 2007 featured jeans embroidered to match her tattoos); maybe it was the nation discovering that the then-Prime Minister’s wife, Samantha Cameron had a dolphin inked on her ankle; or it could be the advent of new styles like watercolour or dot work tattooing. Whatever it is, tattoos have never been more haute.
A session with a hyped tattoo artist like Jon Boy or Bang Bang can set you back some four figures; waiting lists can run into years, not months; and ink done in the signature style of the artist du jour is hotter property than Gucci mules.
“I don’t see one [kind of tattoo] as being inherently better or worse than the over. What do you want to adorn or decorate? Personally, I wouldn’t have a tattoo on my leg because I’m short and I wouldn’t want to make myself look any shorter. We all have different areas we want to focus on,” explained beauty expert and journalist Sali Hughes, who has eight tattoos. “I much prefer the tattoos I have that were done by women, which is about half of them. I prefer being tattooed by a woman, personally. I think they look inherently more feminine, and they definitely hurt less. And I like the bonding experience, it’s more pleasant. Rebecca [Vincent] and I have become really good friends.” Also name-checking bloggers Jamie Genenevieve and Samantha Marie as fellow ink fans in the beauty sphere, Hughes said that while tattoos are now more widely accepted, it’s not acceptance that drives people to get them: “The whole point of having tattoos is that they’re not meant to be liked by everyone else. You wouldn’t want them if everyone loved them, that’s kind of the opposite of the mindset you need to get one done.”
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Indeed, the singer Kehlani has ink up her neck and onto her face, Cara Delevingne boasts an ever-expanding collection, and sisters Kendall and Kylie have inked up where their elder sisters have always refused to. As millennials and Generation Z reject the societal notions of gender, perhaps it’s only natural that tattoos' traditional ties to masculinity have fallen away. “There’s a huge amount of snobbery around tattoos. Women in particular are really sneered at for having certain tattoos with horrible names. But then someone like Samantha Cameron can have the perfect posh girl little ankle tattoo, and that’s fine,” added Hughes.
Of course, the meaning of tattoos for many goes beyond just the aesthetic. There’s plenty of cultural and religious significance behind practices like Mehndi, the temporary henna tattooing, while Buddhism makes use of yantra tattoos, believed to offer spiritual protection. For many, tattoos are wearable art, an extension of an outfit, and for others, they represent meaning or connection to a person or time of significance, outside from just their visual attributes.
Thinking of inking up? Heed Hughes’ advice when it comes to inspiration: “I think it’s a mistake to look to celebrities or fashion people for tattoo inspiration because tattoos are so personal. They’re like jeans, in that I think you should disregard whatever jean style or label is fashionable because at the end of the day you just want the ones that make your bum look nice. Everybody’s perfect jeans will be different and with tattoos you need to go with what suits you.”
Of course, you can always go down the low-commitment route: Diptyque has just announced the launch of their temporary fragrance “tattoos”, which can be re-worn three times and come in three scents: Do Son, Eau Rose and L’Ombre Das L’Eau. Or make like Cara Delevingne at the 2015 Met Gala and embrace the power of the temporary tattoo - the more the merrier, of course.
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