2023-10-01 10:00:00
In the heart of the student district of the Ixelles cemetery, a crackling noise is heard on the first floor of a narrow terraced house with a red brick facade. On the window at the front of the building, located in a street away from the hustle and bustle of Boulevard Général Jacques, is the inscription “tattoo” in white capital letters. The one hundred square meter studio is spread over three levels. Upstairs is a sort of small living room serving as a waiting room, where imposing red Chesterfield sofas sit. It is in this room that the atmosphere of the place is most significant. The black paint on the parquet floor is cracked, as if worn by time. All the walls are personalized with multiple black and white photo frames, monochrome drawings and decorative objects with Polynesian motifs. Only a section of wall, in the left corner, is painted black. It is covered with around ten crucifixes. Apart from this detail, we are far from the cliché of the dark tattoo shop with deafening rock music.
A short flight of metal stairs leads to the top floor, where there is a tattoo area. This is where Jérôme is, thirty years old with a long beard. Behind his round glasses, we can see his gaze focused on the movement of the marker with which he draws on his client’s left shoulder. Multiple tattoos escape from his t-shirt and Bermuda shorts. From his beret there is even a pattern running down the entire right side of his head. His latest tattoo is on his lower back and dates back to a few weeks ago. Jérôme went as far as Germany for this drawing, made with a traditional technique called “hand tapping” or “handpoke”, which consists of tapping an iron, bamboo or bone needle using a small hammer, without using a mechanical machine. Jérôme has managed Studio Perle Noire since 2021. “We celebrated the salon’s tenth anniversary last November. Originally, it was created by Gaël (nicknamed Ponch), but I took it over when he went into exile in the Caribbean, where he created a second one.” Today, the studio has two “resident” artists in addition to Jérôme: a piercer, and his colleague Piwi. The latter, who has worked at the salon for three years, specializes in mixing neo-traditional elements with the influence of artists like Alphonse Mucha. “It has this very soft, effeminate and floral art-nouveau side, with a certain finesse,” he explains. The studio also collaborates with “Alex Reed” artists, notably from France or Denmark.
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“To tattoo an arm, we have to work five full days”
Today’s customer is called Nicolas. The 43-year-old policeman came accompanied by his wife for his second tattoo, supposed to represent his children by the symbolism of three animals: the ray, the turtle and the lizard, as well as letters forming the anagram of their first names. Using a spray, Jérôme sprays disinfectant alcohol on a previously shaved area of Nicolas’s skin. “Be careful, it will get hot. I prefer to tell you before doing it!”, he warns before adding “it will dry out your skin so that my drawing holds well, and at the same time, it removes all small bacteria because, even when you get out of the shower, you still have them on your skin.”
For Nicolas, beyond the type of tattoo, the choice of artist is also of capital importance. According to the police officer, the fact that Jérôme draws directly on the clients’ bodies is the guarantee that his tattoo will never look like any other. However, this unique side requires a lot of time to complete. “It will depend on the type of tattoo, but for an arm for example, we are working five full days, or around thirty hours,” explains Jérôme. “This is the disadvantage of Polynesian compared to classic tattoos which use layers that ‘just’ have to be traced directly on the client. In Polynesian, we create a freehand drawing beforehand and that alone takes already regarding an hour and a half. We work with the anatomy and we follow the curves of the body. This way, if the person gains or loses weight, or builds muscle, it continues to be beautiful.”
“I first practiced on myself, then on friends who were fearless”
Polynesian tattooing is Jérôme’s specialty. He works with three styles in particular: Samoan, from the Samoa Islands, Marquesan, from the Marquesas Islands, and Maori, which comes from New Zealand. These ancestral tattoos are what he calls “real” tribal, unlike the ones from the 90s. “Here, each symbol has one or more meanings, which allows people to tell a story. A symbol can for example mean both ‘family, loving tenderly, committing to family,…'” Fascinated by the world of piracy since he was a child, Jérôme discovered the Polynesian style very early. “That’s what took me to the Polynesian islands. One thing led to another, I started to learn the local culture, I learned a lot and I read a lot.” Always passionate regarding drawing, he was convinced that he would never be able to make a living from it. “Until I decided, at the age of fifteen, to become a tattooist-piercer. Before, I was what we call scratcher, an unregistered tattooist. Since I was 26, I have had a tattoo machine in hand. I first practiced on myself, then on friends who were not afraid. After a while, I understood that I had to go through a proper apprenticeship if I wanted to progress. So I had to find a place to do that, but it wasn’t easy at all.” After four years of searching, he fortunately finally found it. “It took a while, but I finally did it.”
“There are very few of us in Belgium who specialize in Polynesian tattooing”
According to Jérôme and his colleague, the world of tattooing has evolved in recent years, partly thanks to social networks. “At the moment, supply and demand are much greater than at the time, and the networks contribute greatly to this. It is much easier than ten or fifteen years ago to have access to creations. Pinterest is one of the main resources for ideas for future customers, so the fashion effect is inevitably omnipresent. People feel more free and inclined to take the plunge. There are also more and more no more tattoo artists.” Regarding the Polynesian style, Jérôme also highlights the fact that natives began to travel internationally to promote their art. “Tattoo equipment has also evolved enormously,” he adds. “We now work with more sophisticated, wireless machines that make almost no noise. We can therefore say that there has been a rebound in the Polynesian style and its quality.” Generally speaking, demand fluctuates depending on the tattoo artists who come to the salon and the styles that are represented there, even if the main one is Polynesian. “There are very few of us in Belgium who specialize in Polynesian tattooing, so the demand always remains more or less constant, I always have between 3 and 6 months of waiting. As it is a centuries-old tattoo, it is always fashion, without ever being fashionable.”
Unlike his colleagues, Jérôme has very few students among his clients. “Polynesian tattoos are big projects, which involve a large budget. They are thoughtful tattoos, in which each symbol means something in particular. In general, young people of 19, 20, or 21 years old therefore do not get involved not to get a whole arm tattooed. My clientele is a little older than that of my colleagues, I would say it starts between 25 and 30 years old. The oldest client I have ever tattooed was 79 years old.” In terms of gender, between a quarter and a third of Jérôme’s clientele are women. “There are unfortunately a lot of people who don’t know that the Polynesian can also be very feminine. Almost everyone sees it as The Rock (Dwayne Johnson), a kind of warrior tattoo, whereas it can be very feminine Also.”
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“Above all, we do a profession of passion. When we love tattooing, we defend it tooth and nail”
Jérôme also expresses his art in his daily life, by drawing on everything that comes to hand, from skateboards to shoes, including his wallet. “My inspiration comes the same day, I don’t create a project. I draw everything with a felt-tip pen directly on the client’s skin, which requires a lot of letting go, especially during the first session. I do the cutting general and, if it works, I start adding the patterns. As long as the client does not agree or I am not satisfied, we do not attack, obviously. In the studio, we have a leitmotif: if we know someone who will know how to create a pattern better than us, we will automatically direct the client towards this person for the simple reason that above all we are doing a passion job. When we love it tattoo, we defend it tooth and nail.”
Jérôme also sometimes refuses to tattoo certain patterns or certain requests. “The fashion trend not long ago was to tattoo the hands. Our ethic was to say that we had to do it in the right order, starting with the arms first.” According to him, starting with a visible area would be like shooting yourself in the foot. “It’s social suicide because we don’t know what the future holds. Everything that is visible, that is to say the hands, the throat, the face, will inevitably slow down employers, access to credit at the bank, or if you want to go to a chic restaurant, for example. That can unfortunately have a negative influence.” Likewise, if two young lovers want to get each other’s first name tattooed, Jérôme will try to dissuade them because they might regret it in the future. “Obviously there are also hostile symbols. If someone asks me for a swastika, I say ‘look once more, but it won’t be here, that’s for sure’.”
“We are surprised every day by our customers”
Jérôme is also often faced with extravagant demands. “We are surprised every day by our customers. I remember someone who wanted us to put ketamine in the ink to put them to sleep, which we obviously refused. He came back two weeks later in saying that he had found a tattoo artist who had done it for him. It was not a well-established tattoo artist, but someone who did it in his bedroom. He showed me photos in which the client is lying in a bed, without any hygiene precautions. There are only scratchers to do this kind of thing. In professional studios, it won’t happen.”
It must be said that in seven years of practice, Jérôme has experienced many anecdotal situations. “One day, I was chatting with my colleague while I was tattooing a client around the elbow. He didn’t want anything on that area at all because he was afraid it would hurt. While laughing with them, at one point, I slipped and I made a big dot right in the middle. Annoyed, I told him that he had to scratch that part and definitely not use any cream, and that he would come back two weeks later to see if it had worked. taken or not. Obviously, it had taken, otherwise it’s not fun! I offered to tattoo a design on his elbow for free, which he accepted. The first thing I did when I saw that it wasn’t there, it was to take a photo of it and post it on my networks, explaining that, even following seven years of practice, we can still make mistakes. We are not machines, We’re not photocopiers.”
“A tattoo, you wear it for life, so it’s better not to regret it”
According to Jérôme, the world of tattooing is currently experiencing a new fad: people are now willing to travel to get tattooed. “I have clients who have come from Berlin, for example, I have even had Belgians expatriate in Dubai. I myself run to Germany to get tattooed. I think that with the expansion of social networks, artists have more visibility. Many clients are now educated to want a beautiful tattoo, done by a particular artist, even if they have to travel 300, 400, or 500 kilometers. In the end, It’s not any worse, because it’s something you’re going to wear for life, so it’s better not to regret it. Yes, maybe they’ll put a little more money into their tattoo , but today, people buy the new iPhone as soon as it comes out, and they only keep it for two or three years, whereas the tattoo stays for life.” For a tattoo at Jérôme’s salon, you need to count on €80 for unpacking costs and €100 per hour of work.
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