For the 40-something who wants
to add edge to her look, there’s no cooler way than an extra stud
(or four)
Do not touch me!’ shrieked my friend Stacey Duguid, fashion director
of online magazine The Pool, as I bounded over for a hug during London
Fashion Week. Blimey, I thought, someone’s in a mood. But then, with a
wince, she pulled back her hair and it all made sense: four freshly
punched holes alongside her existing four piercings, all eight filled
with gorgeous, delicate diamond and gold studs and hoops, snaking
elegantly up the ears.
They may have been agony (‘I can’t hold my phone to my ear, I can’t
kiss anyone’) but they looked brilliant. Stacey had been to cult New
York piercer Maria Tash’s LFW pop-up parlour at Josh Wood
Atelier; an event so popular that impatient fashion folk waited in a
two-hour queue.
Later that day, I bumped into Lorraine Candy, editor-in-chief of
ELLE magazine. She immediately spied my own ‘helix’ (upper-ear)
piercing and showed me hers.
‘I’ve just had it done in Topshop and it’s so painful. How long did
it take for yours to settle?’ she asked. And it wasn’t just us having
these conversations. We may have been there to look at the clothes,
but all eyes were on each other’s ears.
Piercings – and in particular multiple ear piercings – are a huge
trend in fashion circles; a trend that’s now rippling out into the
mainstream. Early this year, Lauren Stevenson from Aisle 8 PR
organised a hugely successful piercing party for an online jewellery
client. She’d read about New York’s superstar piercers like Tash and J
Colby Smith, who attract both the celebrities and the British fashion
editors when they’re in town.
‘We knew if we created an elegant piercing bar it’d be a success,’
she says, ‘because you don’t have many options for piercing: Claire’s,
where you feel about 12 years old, or a grim tattoo place.’
Maria Tash, meanwhile, generated such a waiting list during London
Fashion Week that she’ll be back at Josh Wood Atelier from 11 to 15
December. At Metal Morphosis in Topshop Oxford Circus, Kevin Lamb and
his team see up to 60 people per day, ranging in age from 17 to 60;
and even Bond Street’s Fenwick, the classic department store for
ladies who lunch, now has a Metal Morphosis piercing outpost.
On the red carpet, actress Emma Watson does multiple earrings and
model Cara Delevingne wears a hoop through her lip. While in high
fashion, Givenchy’s a/w 2015 show somehow managed to popularise the
septum ring – last seen on a crusty I met at a rave in 1993.
Recently, I was on a photoshoot with Emma Hill, the Hill & Friends handbag designer. Amid our
all-female crew of six, the small talk revolved around our ear
piercings (all of us had multiples) and the new lexicon we’ve all
mastered – the helix (the top bit), the daith (the bump just above
your earhole), the tragus (in the middle, where the ear joins the face).
Many of us hadn’t given our ears – and how we accessorise them –
much thought since the ’80s or ’90s, and that teenage rite of passage
of having ball-bearings stapled into our lobes at the local shopping
centre. But women in their 30s, 40s and beyond are going mad for
multiple piercings.
Emma Lavery, 30, head of press at Urban Outfitters and proud owner
of seven piercings, recently stopped by Claire’s in Westfield during a
Saturday afternoon shopping trip: ‘On a whim, I decided to get another
piercing. The lady in the chair before me was probably in her early
40s, and really conservatively dressed – she looked like
a
lawyer. She’d never had her ears pierced before, but was having five
done at once. When I asked her why, she replied, “Midlife crisis!” and laughed.’
Maria Tash reports that 60 per cent of her clientele are over
30. This sounds familiar: most of my life I had the bog-standard two
lobe piercings, but, now aged 40, I find myself with five holes in my
ears, including that helix stud. The sad truth is that they make me
feel a little bit cooler, still ‘with it’, despite encroaching middle age.
‘Piercing is the new leather trousers,’ notes Stacey Duguid. Suffice
to say, if the Unicode Consortium ever wanted to create an emoji
signifying midlife crisis, a woman’s ear with multiple earrings would
be a shoo-in. And it seems piercings have become the more socially
acceptable alternative to a tattoo: they’re a bit rebellious, but not
too much.
‘Looking around my office, no one on the team has had a tattoo in
the last 18 months, but they’ve all had piercings,’ says Lorraine
Candy. Victoria Beckham is apparently undergoing laser-removal
treatment for her wrist inkings, and clinics report that tattoo
removal is on the increase.
‘We’re seeing twice as many patients as last year, and we’ve just
bought a second laser to meet demand,’ says Dr Alexis Granite,
consultant dermatologist at London’s Cadogan Clinic.
Every piercing fan I spoke to concurred that part of the appeal was
that the jewellery is so much nicer than it used to be. ‘It’s become
so fine and elegant, rather than rocky and grungy, like in the ’90s,’
says Lauren Stevenson, who has twinkly diamonds in all five of her piercings.
‘People started to appreciate that all parts of the ear could be
decorated,’ says Maria Tash. ‘Everything used to be very industrial-
looking, like those big steel rings. But now that’s changed – my
earring designs are very beautiful and dainty, and comfortable enough
to be worn continuously.’
Both high-end and high-street retailers have taken note. Fashion
editors like Parisian jeweller Vanrycke or model Laura Bailey’s line
Loquet for their spendy single earrings, while Natalie Kingham,
Matches Fashion’s buying director, says: ‘Loren Stewart offers
diamonds that you can wear every day. Theodora Warre is a new designer
for us for spring/summer 2016, who offers three different-sized hoops
so that you can wear them up one ear. Meanwhile, Charlotte Chesnais,
formerly at Balenciaga, is more sculptural – she plays on how women
like to wear a statement piece in one ear, then layer in the other ear.’
‘Earrings are the fastest-growing category of jewellery,’ says Urban
Outfitters’ head of design Lizzie Dawson. ‘Customers prefer mismatched
earrings for multiple piercings, and we’ve noticed a trend for
asymmetric piercings – say three in one ear, five in the other.’
Asos has seen strong sales on ‘swings’ (a U-shaped piece with a stud
at each end), ‘throughs’ (a long thin piece with no back) and
‘crawlers’ (a bit like a caterpillar running up your lobe). Maria Tash
is also selling a lot of ‘chain orbits’, which link up to multiple
studs. Like I said, it’s a whole new lexicon.
Clockwise from left: Mini orb, from £260 each, Robinson
Pelham; Gold and machelite bar, £400, Asherali
Knopfer; Star daith earrings, £10 each, Ryan Kingsley;
Black-diamond and yellow-gold earring, £288, Loren
Stewart; Pink-sapphire stud, £189, Body Matters Gold
Instagram is also driving the trend: ear selfies – yes, really – are
now a thing. Kevin Lamb shares all his work on Instagram and says that
clients often turn up with photos of other people’s ears as inspiration.
Bianca Presto, who organised the Maria Tash pop-up, says, ‘Straight
after being pierced, women would get on their phones, take a selfie
and post it on Instagram. And no one would leave! They all sat around
chatting about their piercings. There was a real camaraderie.’
It can certainly be a bonding experience. Emma Lavery and her team
went on an ‘impromptu payday piercing jaunt’ during a recent lunch
break, while Emma Hill treated her team members to new piercings to
celebrate the label launch. We’re rediscovering the simple pleasure of
getting our ears pierced with our mates, decades after we last did so.
Clockwise from left: Pearl clicker, £248.48, Venus by
Maria Tash; Sunrise hoop earring set, £75, fashionology; Lobe cuff, £45, Maria
Francesca Pepe; Gold pink tourmaline arc jacket, £124 per
pair, Missoma;
Diamond studs, £580 per pair, Loquet London
And now, beautifully adorned ears may even come with added health
benefits. Big-name acupuncturist John Tsagaris has recently started
offering auriculotherapy, a type of ear acupuncture popular in LA,
with Kate Moss and Penélope Cruz apparently among its fans. Instead of
using needles through the ear, Tsagaris works with Swarovski crystals.
‘The crystals are secured to acupressure points on the ear and with
continuous mild stimulation, a variety of issue can be treated,
including weight management, anxiety, insomnia and circulation
problems,’ he says.
All of which is well and good, but, as ever, we must suffer in the
name of fashion. ‘I spent last night watching YouTube tutorials on how
to care for cartilage piercings,’ sighs Lorraine Candy. ‘It’s still
hurting, nearly three months on.’
When I tell her mine is still tender a full year on, I think I hear
a little sob down the line. Says Stacey Duguid, ‘Even now I can’t
sleep on either side so I go to bed with one of those inflatable neck
pillows, doused in TCP, not wanting anyone to come near me,’ she says.
‘But I won’t take them out because I just love them.’
Maria Tash has a theory that women have an emotional connection to
their piercings. ‘It involves minor discomfort when you have it done
and then you have to heal. And if you take time to nurse something, it
becomes part of you more than, say, a shirt would.’ And so we persevere.
Why we"re all falling for multiple ear-piercings
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