Tragic Or Gotta Have it?


Stick-on glitter diamante tattoos. For many they are an instant reminder of 90’s fad mania: the spice girls, those stretchy lace chokers, platform trainers and awful satin scrunchies. Well low and behold, those pesky little gems that usually ended up in a dusty corner of the cosmetics bag are making a comeback on the catwalk. Yes, the aftermath of tattoo mania has arrived and it’s in sparkly form.


Designer J Maskrey was the one behind the craze first time around, and she’s back at it again. Back in the 1990’s working as a make-up artist, J adorned the likes of Kate Moss, Jenifer Lopez, and Gwen Stefani with her sparkly wonders. Things evolved and she moved into design, collaborating with Alexander McQueen, Ungaro Couture and Sonia Rykiel amongst others, as well as producing her own collections.


Making a return to the catwalk for Winter


2010 Maskrey shocked us once again with her ability to stir up the expectations placed on fashion week. For once, it wasn’t the garments capturing all the attention it was body art that took full priority with draped, black, jersey garments serving as a simple backdrop behind the elaborate skin-wear.


The bottom of the line is that people are


bored with bare skin. Tattooed models are flavour of the month and other forms of skin-art are following suit. Once the trademark for convicts, sailors and circus freaks, skin art has gone full circle and make it’s way from a sneered at subculture to a respected art form and fashionable personal showcase. As the fashion industry has gradually become more open-minded and liberal so has our approval of body-art, or maybe it’s the other way round? Either


way, make-up is no longer just for the


face and jewellery is being used more and more as body adornment in less conventional areas.


Chanel’s temporary tattoos may be


a little trashy but Maskrey’s perfect the faux-tat trend. With offerings in the form of traditional tattoo inspired designs such as cobwebs on necks, snakes slithering up arms, Beckham style crosses and gangster lettering. Abstract patterns made their mark too, with Leopard print making it’s way across shoulders and oil slicked, ebony crystals dripping slowly across the limbs of lithe models.


Love them or hate them,


perhaps Maskrey’s glit- tery designs aren’t the most permanent or practical of invest- ments, but the sense of nostalgia they create for more frivolous times and instant arresting effect have got us spellbound.


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