“There's something really the matter with most people who wear tattoos," Truman Capote once said. "There's at least some terrible story. I know from experience that there's always something terribly flawed about people who are tattooed, above some little something that Johnny had done in the Navy, even though that's a bad sign...It's terrible. Psychologically it's crazy. Most people who are tattooed, it's the sign of some feeling of inferiority, they're trying to establish some macho identification for themselves.” Karl Lagerfled is also not a fan: "I think tattoos are horrible. It's like living in a Pucci dress full-time."
But there are many who will strongly disagree with Capote and Lagerfeld, and there are countless examples of brilliant body art to cite. "I have a lot of tattoos," says Marc Jacobs whose include a cluster of stars, his two bull terriers Alfred and Daisy, Elizabeth Taylor as Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and SpongeBob SquarePants. "My first tattoo I had when I was a teenager was just a little heart. I am very friendly with a great artist, Scott Campbell, and I started going to him to get tattoos. I'm very spontaneous about what I get."
"I think tattoos are horrible. It's like living in a Pucci dress full-time" — Karl Lagerfeld
Patti Smith’s Crazy Horse-inspired lightning bolt was tattooed on her by Vali Myers, an Australian artist and one of her early heroes. Smith told Interview magazine in 1973, “Vali’s an Italian beatnik-witch and she was a big hero of mine when I was 14. She lived on the left bank, the supreme beatnik chick - thick red hair and big black eyes, black boatneck sweaters, and trench coats. Before Edie Sedgwick, she was my heroine. I had pictures of her all over my walls. I never considered her as a real person. Then I was confronted with the real girl, and I thought, ‘oh man, what am I gonna do,’ cause I had dealt with the image so long. She came over to me and we played all these, not really lesbian games, but like flirting with a boy in high school. When she tattooed me, it was painful. It looks like a little lightning bolt. My photos had become real, and I had to deal with that as a reality. It was a great turning point in my life, it had come full circle.”
George Orwell sported bright blue dots on his knuckles, Winston Churchill had an anchor on his forearm and there are rumours that Queen Victoria had a small tattoo in an undisclosed intimate location. Björk has two - a Vegvisir (an ancient Viking compass) on her left upper arm which she got as a teenager, and a small star behind her right ear. Model Cole Mohr is covered in them, many of which he and his friends have penned late at night, while Daria Werbowy has an inscription at the nape of her neck, an anchor alluding to her love of sailing, as well as other discreet symbols, on her fingers, and a snake on her foot. Many of photographer Niall O'Brien's tattoos are done by his close friend, the jeweller Duffy.
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