Welcome to Parloir where tattooing will get the platform and attention it deserves in an editorial project that aims to mirror its mechanics and get beneath the skin to leave a permanent mark. In-depth features will reveal the real-lives of artists like never-before. Shop inceptions and histories will be recorded and current happenings and events marked. Parloir will examine tattooing without prejudice, telling the stories of not only the industry’s pioneers and stars, but also those on the fringes that struggle for acceptance. It will also speak to the lifeblood of the trade, its customers – walking galleries of their own curation. And that’s just the start.
Parloir began some seven months ago as an Instagram page (its maiden post being work by Kim Papanatos Rense) celebrating work that inspired us but also to archive it in a way that would assist customers contemplating designs, by directing them to artists and showing them multiple versions of similar styles or subjects. (It was also about putting all the cool shit in one spot). However, the broader vision was always to produce original content. While tattooing has blossomed unencumbered, the media that reflects it has stagnated and has never graduated beyond treating tattoo art as centrefolds. Parloir aims to change that and ensure the art forms’ contribution to culture is intimately recorded.
Editorially, Parloir will develop week-to-week in new directions but our first offering features long-reads on Liam Sparkes, Michele Servadio and Ross (Hell) Tanner, all of whom speak candidly about their struggles to establish themselves and the debauchery that’s raged in the background. Sparkes has been tattooing Parloir the longest, so it was only fitting we spoke to him first. Servadio is a visionary whose markings make music and Tanner represents a growing scene of artists that exist outside the shops and fight to be taken seriously.
Tattooing is thriving but its also cannibalistic and petty and struggling to come to terms with the reality of the social pollution its own popularity has caused.
But while reality TV, tattoo schools celebrity and social media threaten to debase and gentrify the very essence of this most sacred of arts, everyone that wants a place in the culture should be welcome and their inclusion does nothing to alter its genesis or how we individually feel about it.
Parloir is a place for receiving guests and you’re all welcome to help us celebrate this culture. So, take a seat and lets talk tattooing.