Tattoo Lady

As the star of US reality show LA Ink and the one-time holder of the Guinness World Record for most tattoos given in 24 hours (with a mind-boggling 400), Kat Von D knows her body art. She also knows celebrity, having been involved in high-profile relationships with the likes of Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx and Sandra Bullock’s ex husband, Jesse James. The perfect person, then, to assess for us the engravings on an eclectic array of stars – from Mike Tyson to our own estranged footballing son Stephen Ireland – and tell us what it says about them. As Descartes once (almost) said, ‘I ink, therefore I am.’

Hot Press catches Von D after a difficult week. Her Hollywood Hills home has been destroyed in a fire and her cat has perished. Remarkably, she has decided to press on with promotion for her new book, The Tattoo Chronicles, and appears to have a philosophical outlook on life. “It’s okay,” she says. “I think everything happens for a reason. I’ve been out meeting a lot of fans, so there’s been good, positive energy.” On with the ink then…
MIKE TYSON
I think the Che Guevara one is cool. I love doing portraits and realism so, to me, it’s a pretty awesome tattoo. It’s a pretty painful spot to get tattooed. But it doesn’t surprise me that someone like Mike Tyson can hang in there! Your rib piece is a nice flat area that will lend itself to a larger size tattoo. I’ve no idea why he decided to get Chairman Mao, you’d have to ask him – but for the most part people tend to get portraits of a hero or a person that symbolises something for them. And I think getting your face tattooed is a pretty big statement!

METHOD MAN
There’s an actual name for this kind of lettering: it’s called an ambigram. It says different things from different viewpoints. If you read it one way, it says ‘life’ and if you flip it upside down, it says ‘death’. Usually it’s opposites, like heaven and hell, love and hate. I think it’s becoming a lot more popular in the lettering realm – I’ve been seeing a lot more of these lately. It’s neat!
TRAVIS BARKER
Pretty fitting for a musician! Music and love seem to be two of the big themes for people and music is definitely inspiring. I like the placement of it. It has a very animated style which adds a little bit of movement. It’s important to get big scale tattoos like that, so you can tell what it is from across the room! It looks like something he might have drawn himself? Yeah! I think it’s awesome.

ANGELINA JOLIE
She’s got the latitudes and longitudes of where her children were born? I think that’s so cool. I love the more cryptic sort of tattoos, where you’d have to know the person to find out why they got them. It may just look like a bunch of numbers piled onto each other but to the person it’s actually something as profound as the location of where your children were born. Tattoos are an easy celebration of monumental moments in your life. It makes sense that you would want to do something to celebrate your kid’s life. Her Cambodian tattoo is a cultural one, so it’s not something I would do. You’d probably want to go to a monk or someone to get the authentic version of it. Most of those kind of tattoos are written in languages that not many people speak anymore, so it’s important you get the real deal!

STEPHEN IRELAND
Wings were a really popular thing for awhile. I don’t know anything about this person or his intentions, but wings always look cool on the back – it’s that optical illusion. With that type of piece, you don’t do them overnight. It’s usually done over a few sessions. You work on the outline one day and come back and chip away at it. Nowadays tattoo pigments are pretty revolutionary, so you don’t really have to worry about it fading unless you’re tanning in the sun all day.

BRIAN McFADDEN
A cool tattoo. The words are beautiful. Lyrics are something that speak volumes to people. I’ve always been a big fan of lettering and words, because getting them tattooed is a form of communication. The musician lifestyle definitely lends itself to using tattoos as a form of self expression. It’s easier than it is for, say, an actor – they have to be able to cover them up for certain roles. I’m sure they have make-up, but it’s a pain in the ass!

DOLORES O’RIORDAN
Her son’s name. The idea of family resonates with a lot with people. Your family’s a reflection of where you come from and who you surround yourself with and love. I always like it when people get names on themselves. There’s no physical addiction to getting tattoos. People have hold-ups about the permanency and the pain. Then when they experience it and realise it’s not that bad, it becomes a whole lot easier to get tattooed again. That’s probably where ‘addiction’ comes in.

The Tattoo Chronicles is out now on Collins Design.