Lady Gaga's Zombie Boy muse
2014 has been the year of the tatt, with a huge surge in the number of inked models being used on the catwalk and in campaigns. From Freja Beha turning her tattooed wrist to the camera for the September cover of Australian Vogue to photographer Terry Richardson’s fully inked arm starring in it’s 3rd Valentino campaign – the tattoo has gone from naughty little backstage secret to centre stage star.
Modelling careers can be built or broken on a model being able to appropriate and embody different personas across seasons and brands. Permanently self-branding with a tattoo could be a risky move, so why have so many models embraced the trend for ink? Perhaps this self-expression is two fingers to an industry where their appearance is dictated by others? The meta tattoo of a clothes hanger on the back of Chanel Iman’s neck could be saying just that.
Whatever the reasons, fashion is never static and the industry will eventually long for clean, pristine and uninked skin. Fortunately for models with tatts, a bad skin day or anything else that doesn’t sync with a brand’s vision, there’s Photoshop. Thanks to the digital airbrush, the lion head tattoo on Cara Delvingne’s right forefinger vanished for the quirkily English S/S 2014 Mulberry campaign, reappeared for Chanel’s brooding A/W look book and disappeared again for A/W clean-cut Burberry.
You can’t, however, Photoshop the live catwalk and until recently makeup hasn’t been capable of dealing with the combination of tattoos, high-speed costume changes and hot lights: if a model walked in a show, so did their tatts. However, new developments in cosmetics are changing fashion’s relationship with ink.
Dermablend is the brand of the moment. Their campaign film shows their front-man Rick Genest- Lady Gaga’s latest muse who has who has 80% of his body inked to look like a decomposing corpse– transform from Zombie Boy to boy next door. The development in corrective concealers means that models now have greater control over the visibility of their tattoos and can more easily attune the image they project to different brand identities. In the world beyond fashion, it gives people more flexibility and control over how they present themselves and they can choose, daily, what ink to reveal. Which tattoos go with today’s outfit? Does the inner arm anchor work with these Louboutins?
For those that still fear tattoo regret, temporary skin art has evolved well beyond Crackerjack box cartoon transfers, with some serious designers now getting involved. Industry giant Chanel have created pretty linked chains and stone encrusted swallows, high-street icon Topshop have launched a line of tongue-in-cheek rock n roll themed transfers and boutique stores like Stray Tats and Tattly are designing bespoke fake inkings for their customers.
But does the fake tatt have the same style clout as the real thing? If you buy an A/W2014 Philip Lim poodle-embellished neoprene sweatshirt, wear it all season but hate it by January, you’re allowed to take it off and no one will question your fashion cred or whether you really know yourself. Now that respected designers are embracing fake tattoos, they are no longer seen as a childish version of real ink. They have become fashion items in their own right and like a poodle-embellished neoprene sweatshirt, no one would expect you to wear it forever.
The development in cosmetics and new wave of temporary tattoos have changed the nature of skin art by making it less of a permanent fixture on the body. Even real tattoos can now move with fashion cycles– concealed when they are no longer on trend and revealed when they’re back. For designers, it means that they don’t have to rule out an inked model if ink doesn’t work for their show: they can hire the model, but they can choose whether to hire the model’s tattoos.