A tattoo is usually an image permanently marked on the skin. We choose designs according to our tastes, experiences and obsessions, and entrust them to a tattoo artist. The design may be familiar, but the decision to carry it on a particular body makes the tattoo personal.
With the rise of social media – and perhaps Pinterest above all – tattoos have also become images that can be endlessly replicated. The same rose, snake or tribal motif can appear on thousands of bodies. Yet the tattoo remains attached to a person: even when it is purely aesthetic, it belongs to the body that chose it.
A tattoo being made: the mark and the body it belongs to. Photo: Myotus / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
But taking a tattoo into fashion can mean different things. A garment can reproduce the appearance of tattooed skin, use tattoo imagery as decoration, or transform tattooing into a different visual language. These operations may look similar at first, but they are not the same.
A Note on the Examples
The garments discussed here are selected examples, not a comprehensive assessment of the designers or brands involved. I use them to explore different ways in which tattoo imagery moves from skin to textile, including cases that complicate the distinction itself.
Tattoo Enters the Textile
An early example came from Issey Miyake in 1971. His Tattoo dress used printed imagery to create a dialogue between the body, tattooing and youth culture, and Miyake returned to the subject with Tattoo Body garments in 1989–90 and 1992.
At his first Paris runway show, for Spring/Summer 1989, Martin Margiela presented a trompe-l’œil tattoo T-shirt in skin-coloured netting. The optical illusion made it difficult to tell where the skin ended and the fabric began, creating the impression of tattooed motifs painted directly onto the body. The designs were taken from a nineteenth-century encyclopedic illustration of tattooed men on the island of Nuku Hiva, in French Polynesia.
Jean Paul Gaultier had already explored tattoo imagery by 1990, when he created a long-sleeved black mesh T-shirt, now held by the Palais Galliera. The transparent stretch knit was decorated with grey motifs inspired by Māori tattoos, using flocking and metallic polyurethane transfer, according to the museum catalogue. Unlike Margiela’s skin-coloured trompe-l’œil, Gaultier’s dark mesh remains visible against the body. The motifs, however, follow the garment’s surface, evoking the appearance of tattooed skin without making the fabric disappear into it.
Gaultier returned to the theme on a larger scale with his Spring/Summer 1994 Les Tatouages collection. Some looks used skin-coloured, semi-transparent fabrics that clung to the body like a second skin, while tattoo-like motifs blurred the distinction between clothing and the appearance of tattooed skin. The garment did not merely carry a tattoo. It could also make the body appear tattooed.
Cover-Up Without Needles
The tattoo illusion had another life to live: this time, on the legs.
For Spring/Summer 2020, Vetements presented tattooed tights that created the illusion of tattooed legs. The collaboration with Wolford was first shown during the brand’s June 2019 Paris runway show, where the printed hosiery made the models’ legs appear tattooed.
There is also a material difference that cannot be ignored. Skin and fabric do not behave in the same way. Fabric stretches, folds and shifts; the printed image moves with it, sometimes distorting as the garment changes position on the body. Even when the illusion is convincing, the tattoo remains an image on a textile surface. It does not become part of the skin beneath it.
The garment can reproduce the appearance of a tattoo, but it cannot reproduce the relationship between the mark and the body that carries it.
And as a tattooed person, I have a question: why cover what I am with something I am not?
I cannot deny that I like the aesthetic. That is precisely the problem. I understand why a tattoo looks good. I understand why someone might want the image without the commitment. But why should I want to be tattooed one day and not the next?
Anna Osmekhina, founder of the Ukrainian brand TTSWTRS – a name derived from “tattoosweaters”, the original name of its first capsule collection – has a perfectly reasonable answer: you can experience the visual effect of being tattooed without committing to carrying the design for the rest of your life. And, I would add, without the pain.
Osmekhina also describes clothing as a second skin. From that perspective, tattoo imagery on clothing becomes almost inevitable. Fair enough. Except that a second skin is not a first skin.
I can dress according to how I want to look. I can also dress as somebody else, because sometimes fashion is precisely about constructing the way other people see me.
That is where performance changes everything.
Wild Rose, founded in 2005, began producing tattooed mesh pieces – sleeves, leggings and other garments – for dancers, singers and actors who needed tattooed bodies for their performances. On stage, they had to become someone else. They needed to change skin for a few minutes, and then they could take it off.
An actor or dancer has a reason to become someone else on stage. It is their job.
People walking down the street do not need to look tattooed.
Neither do tattooed people. But a real tattoo belongs to them. A fake one belongs to the look.
Textile Tattoo
There is, however, another way of taking the tattoo out of the skin.
An Alexander McQueen dress (Autumn/Winter 2008) at the Savage Beauty exhibition, V&A, London. Not a piece from the collection discussed here. Photo: Isabell Schulz / Flickr, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Alexander McQueen’s It’s Only a Game collection of Spring/Summer 2005 used nude synthetic mesh embroidered with silk thread to create tattoo-like imagery. Like Gaultier, McQueen used a second-skin effect: the nude mesh clung to the body and evoked the appearance of bare skin. But the tattoo-like imagery was embroidered, not printed. The garment therefore brings two operations together: it creates the illusion of a second skin while translating tattoo imagery into a textile language.
Consider a dress printed with the image of a newspaper. The garment does not need to imitate paper. The newspaper becomes an image on fabric, and the fabric remains fabric. The image can be rearranged, fragmented or recomposed according to the logic of clothing.
Tattoo imagery can work in a similar way. In McQueen’s case, the nude mesh evokes a second skin, while the embroidery translates tattoo imagery into thread, texture and textile ornament. The two operations coexist: the garment simulates the appearance of skin while transforming the tattoo’s visual language through textile craftsmanship.
Gaultier’s work shows that this is not simply a question of print versus embroidery. A garment can evoke tattooed skin while also treating tattoo imagery as a textile surface. What matters is how image, material and body work together.
The fabric remains fabric. The tattoo becomes textile.
The Truth About the Tattoo
I have nothing against fashion borrowing from tattooing. In fact, I find the possibilities fascinating. What bothers me is the idea that the tattoo can be reduced to a surface effect: something that looks rebellious, personal or permanent while requiring none of the commitment that gives those qualities their weight.
A tattoo can be copied. Its image can be printed a thousand times. But the relationship between a tattoo and the body cannot be transferred onto a garment.
And perhaps that is why, when it comes to the real thing, those who want a tattoo still pay the tattoo artist, not the tailor.
