What is it like to get a tattoo that naturally fades after a year?
My Experience at Ephemeral Tattoo, the Brooklyn Studio That Promises No Regrets
I’ve never been a tattoo person. Between my aversion to the permanence and not even having a worthwhile design in mind, the idea was always a moot point. Yet there I was last Friday evening, a stridently tattoo-resistant individual, settling into the cozy front lounge area at Ephemeral Tattoo, a newly-opened studio in Brooklyn that promises no regrets.
Of course regrets—real or potential—are the last things anyone should have ambivalence about before binding oneself to a form of indelible body art, but Ephemeral Tattoo confidently delivers on its tagline with a revolutionary proprietary ink that naturally fades in a year’s time.
“These are real tattoos, applied by real tattoo artists. The tattoos aren’t topically applied. They’re not longer-lasting sticker tattoos,” explains co-founder Josh Sakhai. In other words, the only difference is the permanence. Sakhai and his co-founders, two of whom are chemical engineers, spent six years trialing over 50 different formulations—and count more than than 100 Ephemeral tattoos between them—to develop a medical-grade, biocompatible ink that’s designed to break down and safely absorb into the body in the span of nine to 15 months.
For Sakhai, who currently has 11 tattoos by Ephemeral, his own prior resistance to permanent skin art stemmed from similar reasons as mine, loosely compounded by religious constraints and his conservative upbringing. Tattoo removal, though accessible enough, still has its disadvantages, namely the cost and number of sessions required, as well as the possibility of permanently damaging the skin. Sakhai told me that he and his co-founders didn’t want to ever pursue that path. They hatched Ephemeral “to give people the freedom to express themselves without constraints—from the onset,” he says.
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Laura Neilson
