Love or hate them, boys with tattoos were everywhere in high fashion in 2012, and much like the ink on their perfect skin, they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. From old-school swallow designs to the greyscale neck pieces, body art showed for big guns including Lanvin, Dior Homme, and Trussardi.
Not that tattoos in fashion are quite so new. Inked popstars and celebrities (Pharrell Williams, Adam Levine and Robbie Williams) have all graced the covers of leading magazines, and who could have missed the H&M campaign featuring David Beckham in nothing but body art and tighty-whities. Yet none of those guys model by profession. The first buzz (or swooning) began in the autumn of 2011, when heavily-inked Daniel Bamdad was seen strutting it for the SS12 collections in fashion weeks across the world. With his throat and chest pieces, and his hard-as-nails bone structure, Bamdad kicked the doors open for a flood of other street-y, “real” faces to follow, namely Jimmy Q, Ben Palmer, Norman Theuerkorn, and most-hyped newcomer David Metcalfe.
What does this resurgence of real point to? Maybe it’s no coincidence that it came as large proportion of Europe was slumped in recession –there’s nothing more real than losing money, or seeing street-level authenticity as offering something high fashion can’t. There was no more extreme example of fashion’s fetish for body art than the Canadian model Rico Zombie Boy (Rick Genest to his mum), who was discovered in 2011 by Nicola Formichetti and put to work for Lady Gaga and Thierry Mugler. His appearance sent inky shockwaves through the fashion world, challenging contemporary ideas of beauty.
But perhaps it also suggests the desire to see more of the models themselves: tattoos are nothing if not the stories, symbols and messages their owners want to communicate to the rest of the world. Isn’t their uniqueness what makes these models so appealing when beauty is endlessly monitored and measured? Fashion’s inked-up suicide boys exaggerate masculine ruggedness and flip conventional ideals on their head – and let’s be honest, what’s more fun than playing rebel on the catwalk?