Reclaiming the Body: Tattoos as the Future of Fashion

RECLAIMING THE BODY: TAT TOOS AS THE FUTURE OF FASHION

In his poem “Tattoo,” American poet Wallace Stevens explains the way light imprints itself on water and crawls under our eyelids. Tattoo in the English vocabulary has three uses: 1) an indelible mark or figure fixed upon the body by insertion of pigment under the skin or by production of scars, 2) the act of marking the skin, and 3) a rapid rhythmic rapping. Wallace’s poem seems to simultaneously refer to all of these things. The rhythmic patterning of light, the mark light leaves on a surface, the imprint of light on our eyes—perhaps he never meant for his definition to be so broadly interpreted. Most automatically assign tattoo its most common definition: a mark fixed upon the body. The current drama of the tattoo has in recent decades been its permanence—a concept ironically wholly missing from its acute definition. A Lilly on a left shoulder, a coy fish swimming up a thigh, these are all forms extracted from small crevices of visual culture and assigned some infinity on the skin. Permanence is perhaps what has so often separated tattoos from the volatile world of fashion. Yet under the umbrella of self-expression both tattoos and fashion are made of the same light that crawls under our eyelids. In fact, the significance of a skin as canvas may be on the cusp of what it means to define and redefine the modernity of the industry. How do tattoos define and redefine the bodies they inhabit? How do tattoos implicate gender norms? LSA sophomore Lilly Morris says for her tattoos were never a question of yes or no, but rather of when, where, and what. “There’s this iconic picture of me as an infant sitting on my dad’s lap and him holding me, and his arms are just covered in tattoos. He looks like a biker, and, ever since I was little, he used to draw some of his tattoos on me, so I always just knew that I would get one.” Just because tattoos have always been a part of her visual world, however, she hasn’t been sheltered from their stigmas. “Outside of home life, I grew up learning that tattoos are against Judaism, and tattoos are not appropriate if you’re a girl, and ‘girl’s shouldn’t get sleeves—that’s gross.’ There are so many underlying stereotypes that people have about tattoos, and everyone has their own opinion.” Smoothing over the coy fish that swims up her left calf, she nods, “I got this knowing that it was an invitation for people to comment on my body, so that’s something I had to prepare myself for.” In the runway world, this invitation for comment may be reinterpreted as a wish to enter a relevant conversation. The 2018 Spring/Summer season experienced an insurgence of tattoos on the runway. Oscar de la

Renta, Marc Jacobs, Coach, Eckhaus Latta, Helmet Lang among other names showcased tattoo-clad models. At Marc Jacobs, Jamie Bochert wore an open back dress that revealed a snake skeleton winding up her spine. Other designs were more subtle—small cartoons on wrists at Coach, flowers on hands at Alexander Wang, outlines of shapes on sternums at Helmut Lang. The rising prevalence of tattoos in high fashion can be traced as far back as Jean Paul Gaultier’s Spring 1994 collection Les Tatouages, which experimented with trompe d’oeil sleeves. In 2009 Chanel sent models with temporary leg tattoos down the runway and in 2011 Louis Vuitton’s spring menswear collection showcased tattoos by renowned artist Scott Campbell. A tattoo-clad Cara Delevingne graced the cover of Vogue Paris in October 2017. The exponential trend of the visibility of tattoos in the world of high fashion is in line with the relatively recent intersection of the subversive connotation of tattoos with their more widespread acceptance in modern western culture. The tattoo may be considered a subdivision of street wear. In an article for The New York Times discussing the elaborately tattooed mannequins showcased in the windows of Barney’s on Madison Ave during the Spring of 2016, cultural historian Christine Rosen suggests that what were once seen “as the seditious insignia of proud outliers [during tattooing’s resurgent in 1990s are now], in [our] era of excessive individualism…viewed not as a sign of freakishness or outlier tendencies but as an expression of personal taste.” Becky Simonov, an LSA Junior with a major in Communications and a minor in Sustainability, sees her tattoos not so much as an expression of personal taste but as a documentary timeline. She centers this timeline not only on reclaiming her sense of self, but also on reclaiming her body. “I was going through a sort of rough patch mentally and emotionally and what I would consider a pretty big period of change and growth, and I was really tired of being a timid person and kind of closed off.” Becky got her first tattoo just over a year ago. On her left arm is a a map circumscribed by a triangle. “I had been planning on getting tattoos, and I had this one design that I was going to get. At the last minute, I decided to get something completely random. I wanted to have this autonomy to do random things to my body, to decorate it the way I want. That’s why when people ask, ‘Well what does it mean?’ I don’t really have an answer. It’s more just about a time. It’s purely aesthetic.”

Unlike Lilly, Becky’s upbringing did not paint a favorable picture of tattoos. “My family is also Jewish, and tattoos are so against the religion, and for years I would say, ‘I can never get a tattoo’. It wasn’t until college when I finally started to become my own person that I allowed myself to like the look. I remember very vividly being with my brother right before college started and looking at this book cover where they had sleeve tattoos, and I turned to him and said, ‘I think I want sleeves.’ I loved the idea of the power of it.” However, as part of the LGBTQ+ community, Becky is hyper aware of the power of imposed perception. “I’ve dated multiple women who have tattoos, and I find it so attractive. I think because it seems to suggest they, like me, are taking control of their body, that they have autonomy; that they are artistic. They have this confidence to some capacity that may not have been socialized. And why is that different for men? They don’t seem to be taking control of anything. When I see woman with highly visible tattoos I say, ‘Wow this is interesting,’ it’s like a statement. With men, it seems less about the body; it just seems aggressive.” A new exhibition at the New York Historical Society entitled “Tattooed New York” traces the origins of tattoos in New York’s region through art. It begins with the region’s native Iroquois and continues through the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1970. Janice Joplin and The Women’s Liberation Movement are largely credited with the widespread acceptance of tattoos as personal expression. The full history of tattooing in western culture, however, reaches back much further. Captain James Cook and his crew of tattooed sailors returning from the Pacific Islands supposedly brought tattoos to the West in the sixteenth century. This of course led to the identification of tattoos with the “primitive” and therefore led to their association with the lowclass. According to a 2003 study by Atkinson, the prevalence of tattoos in low societal and therefore outsider groups such as prisoners, the military, and motorcycle gangs have since contributed to their hyper-masculine association. Therefore much of our culture’s definition of tattoos forgets or manipulates their distant origins and other cultural connotations. Some of the very first evidence of tattoos was found on the mummified bodies of female Egyptians. While western excavators (exclusively male) labeled the presence of tattoos as perhaps marks of the concubine (in line with

western history of the link between tattoos and prostitution), historians at the Smithsonian have suggested that tattoos served a “therapeutic role and functioned as a permanent form of amulet during the very difficult time of pregnancy and birth.” What Becky is tapping into is a relatively new front of research that connects the tattoo’s western history to its modern day physiological implications. A 2007 study by Swami and Furnham, researchers at the British Psychological Society, showed that women with tattoos were rated as less physically attractive but more sexually confident. A 2015 poll by Harris taken in the US found that women tend to have smaller and less visible tattoos overall. A recent article in Psychology Today highlights a new study by Polish psychologists Andrzej Galbarczyk and Anna Ziomkiewicz in which both men and woman rated images of tattooed men as healthier, more masculine, and dominant. At the same time both men and women with tattoos were rated as worse potential partners and parents. What does all this mean for the relationship between fashion and tattoos? To say that tattoos are an expression of personal taste seems a side note to their greater evolutionary path. While the future of fashion is leaning towards homogeneity (both of gender and culture) and brings with it the normalcy of the body as canvas, the speed at which high fashion picks up conversations can sometimes be problematic. In asserting the normalcy of tattoos, the industry can sometimes gloss over their historical implications and culturally ingrained psychological associations. Some campaigns can even enforce these presumptions. Take for example Valentino’s 2014 ad campaign. The campaign showcased tattooed male arms and hands grasping brightly colored handbags and shoes. The ad actively sought to perpetuate the gender dynamics we assign to the material—the femininity associated with objectification, the possessive qualities associated with masculinity, the aggressive nature of tattoos, the delicate nature of footwear. The result is counterproductive. Like Lilly, we still deal with manipulation of the body as an open invitation to comment on the body. The fashion stage, it can be argued, thrives on this

WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE BODY THAT STILL TERRIFIES US?

commentary. But there’s a fear there. When this commentary is inherently gendered, how does it become regressive rather than progressive? Why does this kind of personally acknowledged bodily intimacy translate to an invitation? How exactly do we flip the conversation from he’s aggressive to he’s artistic and in tune with his body? From she’s making a statement about her body to she’s artistic and in tune with her body? These are perhaps questions that fashion should begin to address. Tattoos have the potential to be the future of fashion because they still have the power to be subversive. They’ve been around for thousands of years, but still they have the power to make us stop and question, to stop and stare. What is it about the body that still terrifies us? Fashion’s future is perhaps in working towards eradicating a tattoo’s incredibly gendered implications and with it that very fear of the permanence of owning our own bodies, and our simultaneous fear of losing that very ownership. As streetwear merges with couture, cross-cultural collaboration inspires, and the definition of fashion broadens, the tattoo is perhaps at the forefront of all these conversations. I want to return to this idea of the tattoo as rhythmic. Is it possible that we could learn to experience tattoos rather like music? Imagine Jourdan Dunn on the runway. The skeletal snake tattooed up her spine, though clashing with the sequined fabric of her backless dress, seems to be the out of tune key that rather gives the piece it’s very purpose: to expose something genuine in the conception of an art form. We wear our clothes; our clothes don’t wear us. Tattoos should imprint themselves on us like light on water. Perhaps we will grow to become our tattoos. Like poetry, tattoos are full of visualized intimacy. Stevens talks about how invested we are in the visual, suggesting that while we extract images, we also embed ourselves in those images. More plainly, we own image as much as it owns us. There are filaments of your eyes/On the surface of the water/And in the edges of the snow. While in modern culture our tattoos still so often own us, the power of the art of fashion is to continually remind us of our own autonomy. What about permanence in an ever-merging world stabilizes us, how do we detach our identities from our continually changing bodies? What about permanence terrifies us, what about that fear empowers us? These questions are not about progress, but ones about reclaiming origin, those ancient Egyptian women—the glorified, protected, and emboldened keepers of their bodies.

By Sophie Cloherty

Layout by Paige Wilson Photos by Ryan McGlaughlin