Permanent Fashion
Photographed by Mario Testino, Vogue, December 2000
Humans have decorated their bodies since prehistory as a means to tell their stories, but until recently, the tattoo as a form of body modification has been the domain of the fringe and the out-group.
Design by Anna Osmekhina, SS19
Especially as Western cultures relax, tattooing has become a mainstream form of self-art. Gone are the days where you must hide tattoos from family members and employers alike. Now, tattoos are ubiquitous. From the resurgence of Maori Ta Moko to the split decision walk-in, tattoos physically show who we are and who we have been. But as the everyday world embraces tattoos, the arbiters of high fashion lag behind. The Eurocentric beauty standards on which the industry was founded still hold, even if they are breaking. British Vogue, for example, celebrated its May 2020 cover which displayed its first large face tattoo. The thing is, it was not a tattoo. As stated by the magazine itself, it was makeup designed in a tattoo style, demonstrating a wariness to embrace the permanence of “blemished” skin. The high fashion world seems intrigued yet repulsed by tattoos. Fashion has always taken inspiration from counter-cultures, sanitizing it until only the edge factor remains, disconnected from its origins. It is the aesthetic which enthralls the industry, as it was with the Vogue cover, yet this wrongly assumes that tattoos are merely decorative. Even when a tattoo is at its most basic level of “Oh, I just thought this looked cool,” there exists a deeper meaning: a willingness to live in the moment and record that moment on one’s body. This is not to shame impermanent tattoo fashion. Forward-thinking designers like Issey Miyake and Anna Osmekhina celebrate tattoo artistry and consciously involve the impact of tattoos in their designs. But we must examine the hesitancy for high fashion to fully welcome tattoos and tattooed models into an industry which favors airbrushed perfection.
